Mass Effect:  Fallen Soldier
by Enigmat1c
Summary: Following the elimination of the Collector threat, a former Special Forces soldier in cryostasis for thirty-seven years is revived to join Commander Shepard's group and help combat the incoming Reaper invasion.
1. Chapter 1:  Dreams

The sunset was mesmerizing. Embattled and drained, I was ecstatic to finally see clearly again. Blood dripped from the various wounds on my body, leaving a trail on the crisp green grass that I walked through. I stopped moving when my feet hit the sand. A nice, cool breeze soothed my body, as the sticky mixture of blood and sweat poured onto the grass. I felt as though the conflict was finally over; upon deriving this, I dropped the pistol from my right hand. I unslung my battle rifle and threw it next to my pistol. My combat armor, knife, and what was left from my grenades followed. I removed my helmet and set it gently in front of me. The gash in my right shoulder made all of this rather strenuous.

With blood still dripping from my wounds, I stepped into the sand with my boots. I felt weaker with every step, but I continued to advance further onto the beach. The sound of the water crashing onto the white sand soothed my mind, as after these past few days, I finally felt sound. We managed to drive the enemy back to where they came from, at the cost of many lives; many lives that will never be recognized or celebrated. It was 2148, and Humankind was on the brink of extinction, yet only a few hundred or so out of the billions alive were aware of what was going on. I was the last from my combat unit. I survived the horrors brought forth by this entity, a mere probe for a more devastating invasion force.

The scriptures on the epitaphs of the Prothean ruins on Mars spoke of an unspeakably evil force called the Reapers. These Reapers brought about the extinction of all living sentient beings in the galaxy every 50,000 years. Mars and another planet called Ilos were the last remaining Prothean colonies after the Reapers invaded during their time. The scientists suggested that upon realizing the genocide of their race and the hopelessness of the situation, that the few survivors of the invasion left behind clues about the Reapers' existence, hoping to prevent a future species from having the same happen to them. Then there was some strange gateway and technology that the Protheans left behind; its secrets were never revealed while I was still around.

The Reapers sent a small reconnaisance contingent to the Solar System. The United States' NASA and the European Space Agency both had their eyes on this small fleet. The Reapers spent about four months wandering through the Solar System until they finally targeted Earth. Sensing humankind's first encounter with an alien species, every measure was secretly taken by the American and European governments. Firstly, not a single civilian was made aware of their presence. Diplomatic rehearsals and role-play became a round-the-clock thing between the governments. Most importantly, my Black Ops unit, codenamed Phantom-2, was tapped to prepare for possible hostility from the aliens. Should that be the case, my unit's mission would be to neutralize the enemy and cover all evidence up. UFO sightings were not a concern; they could easily be dismissed.

Unfortunately, that is what it came to. Our governments sent encrypted messages to the aliens, determining a meeting place and agenda. The diplomats and negotiators awaiting the aliens were the first to die. Upon landing on Earth, on this remote island in the middle of nowhere in the Pacific Ocean, these Reapers unleashed hell. In an extremely bloody battle, my team valiantly fought them and died, not before ultimately helping me find the Reapers' weakness. Their sacrifices allowed me to expose the Reapers, and I hit them where it hurt. Their real strength was not in their massive ships; it was in the shock troops that powered them, and without them, the ships themselves were useless.

The shock troops were the true incarnation of pure evil; they were biomechanical beings of incredible strength and speed and utterly proficient in combat. The odds seemed impossible, but I survived gritty, seemingly suicidal situations before. Four straight days and nights were necessary to combat their shock troops with my Phantom-2 platoon in the steamy jungles. I was the only survivor. Over a hundred of the world's finest, most battle-hardened, and elite soldiers lost their lives protecting the planet.

I advanced into the surf, the saltwater stinging my wounds. I stopped and stared at the lifeless Reaper ship laying directly in front of me in the water. Moments later, four black helicopters, special forces laden appeared and landed directly behind me. A few of my comrades assisted me back to one of the choppers, warning me of the impending nuclear strike on the string of islands. As if on cue, the four Reaper ships disintegrated right after they informed me of this, leaving no trace of their incredibly advanced technology behind. The nuke would wipe out the islands, anything left by the alien race, and every bit of evidence of conflict. In the world's eyes, this never happened.

I was immediately ferried to Papoose Lake, more commonly known as the staging grounds of "Area 51". Being the lone survivor of physical contact with the aliens, I was deemed and unexplainably vital asset to U.S. interests. Because of this, I was taken against my will during my debriefing to a cryo-chamber, where my body was tested for any traces of alien material. Upon coming up empty-handed, the government decided to put me in cryostasis, and indefinitely separate me from the life I knew. They ultimately decided to leave me there until my knowledge and experience was needed…


	2. Chapter 2:  Awakening

It all seemed like an instant to me. It seemed like I went through some strange time-metamorphosis; like I had entered some kind of alternate reality. Maybe I was, in a way. I felt as though I had just gotten a regular night's sleep when I suddenly felt my chest heaving and started gasping for air. My entire body was immobile and numb, but I could tell that my body was taking in fresh air for the first time in years. Some kind of visor covered my eyes and an oxygen mask sheathed my nose and mouth. However, the ice my body was submerged in almost instantly vanished, and I felt my body full into a pool of liquids. Frantically, I removed the face mask and the visor by slamming them into the ground. My memories were not there at all; as my eyes opened I was almost shocked to see the limbs that protruded from my body, as if I was a newborn creature just brought into existence. I attempted to open my eyes, but they were immediately overwhelmed by the brightness of the world.

I felt hands grab at me to settle me down. I furiously fought back blindly until I felt a slight pain in my back and fell unconscious again. During this new sleep I could dream once again. These dreams were completely surreal, however, and I could make little to no sense of them. I had conversations with faceless phantoms, attempted to help an exiled alien species reclaim its homeworld, and conducted a night time combat drop and hostage rescue in the dusty neighborhoods of Turkmenistan with my former joint-force special operations Phantom squad throughout the duration of my unconsciousness. At the very end of the sleep, I found myself sitting on a deserted beach, in the same combat gear I wore during the battle with the Reapers. With weapons laying on the ground next to me, I calmly smoked a cigar, staring out at the ocean and the visible cosmos, while being accompanied only by the eerily pale glow overhead of the sea of tranquility.

"Sergeant Grimm," was the first thing I heard that my brain could properly analyze.

"Sergeant Blaine Grimm, we need you to remain calm as you regain consciousness," the voice instructed me. I decided to oblige the momentarily bodiless voice and stay cool, refusing to open my eyes yet.

"We have desensitized your eyes, so if you feel comfortable, you can open them. Before you do so, please make sure you have a clear mind. Your world is much different now," it then told me in its angelic feminine voice.

'_Jesus, how long was I out for?'_ was all I could think to myself as I prepared to open my eyes. I opened my eyes and found myself in some kind of containment chamber loaded with extremely strange looking monitoring equipment. _Alien_ looking monitor equipment. I sat up and glued my eyes directly on the giant aperture in front of me. I got up slowly and walked over to the window in my robe and looked outside to find myself an immeasurable number of stories in the air, surrounded by hundreds of equally large skyscrapers and flying vehicles everywhere. After looking around the immediate surroundings I looked up into the sky only to find myself even more in shock. Multiple moons were scattered about the orange-purple sky. It was pretty damn obvious I was no longer on Earth.

"Sergeant Grimm…" the same angelic voice muttered behind me. "I understand the duress you must be undergoing right now. Everything has dramatically changed for your kind in the past thirty-seven years. You are no longer in a consciousness dominated by human-centric thought. Welcome to the galactic community, you are currently in Nos Astra, capital of the planet Ilium. My name is Liara T'Soni,"

Following her personal introduction, I turned around, expecting to meet another fellow human. Instead, I found myself looking eye to eye with a humanoid being of blue skin, offering a smile and an extended hand. For the next few seconds, my brain went through a storm of thoughts. Part of me told me I was still unconscious and that this was just an incredibly well-detailed dream, while another part of me told me to stop being paranoid about what seemed to be reality. After some more split-second bickering within my head, I approached Liara and extended my hand to hers. We shook hands and I returned a cautious smile, making my uncertainty of the situation clear as day.

"I understand you probably have many questions. Please put on the suit I have prepared for you and follow me to my lounge," Liara said. Still refusing to speak, I simply nodded my head and retrieved the suit from the closet she directed me to. She stepped outside the room to allow me some privacy to suit up. I zipped up the dark blue and yellow collared coat, put on the dark blue pants and shoes and exited the room. With a smile, she motioned for me to follow her down a spiraling staircase immediately to our right. Before making the descent, I caught a glimpse of another alien that looked very similar to Liara speaking to a group of armed humans at the opposite end of the hallway. After making the quick observation, I followed her down the staircase and into her rather simplistic lounge. Aside from another wall-sized window, the lounge consisted simply of some kind of projection machine, a table with two half-empty glasses on it, a door, and three couches.

"Care for a drink, Mr. Grimm?" she asked. I momentarily glanced at the drink.

"What the hell is that?" I asked.

"It's Asari syrum, an alcoholic drink," she responded with a small laugh. I hesitantly took the glass and took the first sip from it. It tasted absolutely horrendous but I decided to act as though it was the best damn drink I had ever had so as to not offend my hostess. I set the drink down and took a seat on a blue couch that was propped up against the wall directly across from the window.

"Look Ms. T'Soni. I appreciate what you have done for me so far, but where am I? And where is General Adkins? I need to report to my immediate command,"

"Mr. Grimm, your old command is no longer in existence. In fact, most of which you knew and grew up with are no longer around. Places, things, people…"

"People? How damn long was I out for?"

"About thirty-seven years Mr. Grimm. To be completely honest with you, I-" I had to cut her off.

"Thirty-seven years? Where is my fiancé? My sister and mother?" I demanded to know.

"I apologize Mr. Grimm, but I literally mean most of which you knew is gone. Your fiancé got married to a man named Jake Jones and they were both killed in the Geth attack on Eden Prime a couple of years ago. Your mother and father are both dead. Only a few officers you worked with during your time in the military are alive and still aware of you," she said as my jaw dropped and my neck sunk in. Was what I was being told really true? Was everything I once knew really gone? And what the hell are the "Geth"?

"And you know all of this how, Ms. T'Soni?"

"I'm an information broker Mr. Grimm, one of the best. My business is information. And since I became responsible for you, I took it upon myself to find out everything possible about you. I must say, your past is very interesting," she responded. I paused for a few moments, desperately streaming through thoughts and useless rationalizations.

"What are the Geth? Some terrorist group?" I demanded, raising my voice. She was gone, but I figured I could still get some revenge on the group responsible for her death.

"Sergeant, the Geth are a race of artificially intelligent beings. They were created by the Quarians to suit their needs. Upon becoming self aware, the Geth launched a full scale war with the Quarians and exiled them from their own planet. They are utterly fearless and proficient at combat, and though once viewed as a threat to organic beings, they may actually be vital to the survival of all sentient life in the coming war…" Liara tapered off.

"Quarians? Coming war? What the hell are you talking about?"

"Sergeant, do you remember being the lone survivor of the battle with the Reapers thirty seven years ago?" she asked. As soon as she said the word "Reapers", everything came into perspective. More memories started pouring into my head. Before I went unconscious when I was put into cryostasis, I overheard General Adkins, the at-the-time chief of Special Operations Command, say that I was not to be awoken until my knowledge and experience with the Reapers was needed to protect human interests.

"Yes. A lot of close friends died during that horrific battle," I muttered as I continued to recollect my past in my thoughts.

"The Reapers are on their way. Their goal is to commit the genocide of every living being in the galaxy. You fought them, you defeated them. Without doubt, they were forced to adapt and make changes to the way they operate to ensure their own future success. They know you by name, and more than likely now know you are awake once again. There is only one man higher on their list of interest than you," she explained.

"So why did you wake me up if you knew it was only going to piss them off?"

"It wasn't my call. A covert human group called Cerberus made me an offer for jail-breaking you. I find you, revive you and hand you over to them to assist in their preparations for the impending Reaper fleet, and they help me close a case I have been trying to crack for years,"

"I am revived and forced to work for someone who I don't have the slightest bit of info about? Look Ms. T'Soni, I have my own rules of operation. I don't work for anyone unless I know them and the cause. I've done my share of dirty work, and I know damn well that there isn't anyone completely trustworthy. I have done bad things for the wrong reasons," I explained, referring to the various assassinations, kidnapping, and black ops I had taken part in years ago. I picked up the drink and took another sip as I was getting ready to continue talking, and as if on cue, someone knocked on the door. Liara got up and approached the door.

"Myala what is it? I told you not to…" she could not finish her statement as the door was bashed open from the other side, knocking her back to the ground. As soon as she hit the floor, she was engulfed in some strange-looking blue aura and _levitated_ herself back up. She then threw what appeared to be some sort of blue energy ball at the doorway. I sprang up, hands ready to deal with the hostiles. Liara's blue orb was deflected as a group of four heavily armed humans entered the room.


	3. Chapter 3:  Pursuit

"Ms. T'Soni, I am Lieutenant Royce, here on behalf of The Illusive Man," the front man of the small group proclaimed. He wore some heavy yellow and black armor, with some sort of strange electrical shield surrounding him. The other three in the group held strange looking assault rifles and wore similar yellow and black combat gear, including some face-covering helmets.

"I'm assuming you are here to secure the deal. Now tell me what I need to know to bring down the Shadow Broker," Liara calmly responded in a rather professional tone. The Lieutenant then handed over a datapad to Liara, which she immediately inspected.

"The information you need is there," the Lieutenant responded, then turned his attention to me. "Sergeant Blaine Grimm, I presume?" he asked and extended a hand out to me.

"This lead is dead. This is old news, I already was given this data," Liara stated before I had a chance to shake the Lieutenant's hand.

"It is the lead you requested. Whether the data truly proves to be useful or not is not of my concern. Cerberus upheld their part of the deal, now it is time for you to uphold yours," Royce responded.

"This is old data. The deal is off," she furiously responded. The three armed men immediately raised their weapons at Liara, who quickly responded by casting some strange blue field around them. Lieutenant Royce then drew a pistol and pointed it directly at her forehead.

"You kill my men, I kill you and take Sergeant Grimm over here with me," he said. Little did the guy know I had no intention of being "taken" as some kind of cargo by anyone.

"He is already revived and conscious, don't be stupid Ms. T'Soni. Whether or not the data we provided you is what you were asking for, you have no reason to hold him back from us. We need him,"

"Come to think of it, I know someone else who could probably make better use of him on their team than you," Liara responded. I was getting tired of the talking, so I immediately jumped between the two, swiftly disarmed the Lieutenant by breaking his hand, then delivered a surgical strike to his neck, effectively knocking him out. Liara proceeded to lift the three guards up within her blue aura, then threw them out her window, shattering glass everywhere. I could hear them scream as they fell down from this unspeakably tall skyscraper.

"How did you…"

"No time for that Mr. Grimm. I know Cerberus well, and that was not all they sent here. I need to get you out of here and on a ship off this planet," she responded. I grabbed the pistol the Lieutenant dropped when I disarmed him and scavenged a few thermal clips off his unconscious body. We exited the doorway and ran down the corridor to our right. The strange, glowing walls cast an azure glow on our bodies as we moved, illuminated slightly more by the incoming light from the planet's sun through the glass wall to our right. As we moved, I went from an alert to combat-mode mentality. After about another twenty yards of running, we ran into an elevator and boarded it. Liara then hit the switch, and instructed the V.I. that was in control of it to take us to ground level.

"What the hell is going on?"

"I should have known better than to trust The Illusive Man's intentions," she said, shaking her head.

"Hello? Who am I supposed to trust?"

"You can trust me. I am a close friend of the man who saved the galaxy twice now. Like you, he killed a Reaper and thwarted their first major attempt to begin their mass extermination. He then killed a Reaper in the middle of its construction and eliminated the threat posed to humans by an alien race we called the Collectors. He is now traveling the galaxy, searching for more allies and ways to prepare for the incoming Reaper fleet. He is the one you need to link up with,"

"And who is this person you speak so highly of?"

"His name is Commander Shepard. He is the leader of the most talented crew in the galaxy, as well as the commanding officer of the Normandy SR-2,"

"Look, I need closure on some things from my past. I have no interest in helping anyone or their cause, be it some galactic hero or stopping the Reapers, until I have eradicated my personal demons,"

"I am sure Commander Shepard will be able to help you solve your personal issues. What is important now is that we get you off this planet," she offered as the elevator reached the bottom floor. As it stabilized, I overheard a voice on the other side of the door taking.

"Sir, we are waiting for them at the elevator door. We will intercept them," the male voice said. The adrenaline rush I already had shot through the roof as I readied my pistol. As soon as the dual doors parted each other, I delivered four headshots with deadly efficiency. The four mercenaries dropped to the ground lifeless. As Liara started scouting ahead, I acquired one of their assault rifles and a few more thermal clips. _M-15 Vindicator_ I mumbled to myself, reading off the model number and description that was etched into its side. I then returned to Liara's side, crouching behind a crate. We seemed to be in some sort of garage, crawling with more of these Cerberus mercenaries. She signaled me to follow her again, and we began making quick advances between successive cover. We eventually worked our way over to an exit door but could not avoid a mercenary who was standing immediately next to it.

"I got this," I whispered to Liara and set the battle rifle down. She nodded her head as I left the cover and entered the shadows. I slowly crept up behind the guard, who had diverted his attention to some bug crawling on the ground close to him. The shadows kept me hidden from the other guards who had a direct line of sight to his location. As soon as I got into striking range, I lounged forward and put him in a chokehold, muffling his mouth in the process. As soon as he went unconscious, I quietly dropped his body and moved back to Liara and recovered the rifle and we proceeded to go through the exit door.

We found ourselves on a catwalk, extending to another tall building with a sign saying "Trading Floors" above its entrance. We quickly advanced to the other side just to get surprised by a spray of bullets flying at us from behind. I grabbed Liara and threw her to the ground and dove over her, putting the assailants in my crosshairs. With three quick bursts from the Vindicator, I downed five more mercenaries.

"That is strange, none of them are wearing shields," Liara commented.

"No, they are. All of those were headshots," I responded. She glared at the bodies and confirmed my statement.

"Throw your rifle away, we don't want to attract any more unwanted attention when get in here," she told me. I complied and threw my rifle over the edge of the catwalk and tucked my pistol beneath my jacket.

"When we walk into this building you need to be as professional as possible and keep an open mind," she said to me.

"Keep an open mind about what?"

"Many things that in your time was considered immoral is actually normal here. You must remember that this is a much different society. For example, having indentured servants is a common practice,"

"So slavery? I can fix that issue real quick," I responded, referring to the warlord my squad and I eliminated forty years ago who trafficked women and children.

"No Mr. Grimm, some willingly give their service as indentured servants to settle debts with others. It is a completely legal and galaxy-recognized practice,"

"You have got to be kidding me," I responded as she opened the door and we entered the building. I never knew that I would see the day when that kind of stuff was normal again. Being an indentured servant to settle a debt? Have they not heard of declaring bankruptcy? As we entered the doorway, I was immediately hit with a sharp migraine. I began having flashbacks.

I was suddenly back on the island in the Pacific Ocean. I dodged incoming electromagnetically-charged projectiles as I sprinted into the jungle. The blue rays incinerated everything they touched, but luckily for me, the enemy seemed hesitant to fire at the jungle, maybe because they could not tell where I was and they wanted to conserve ammunition. My teammates beside me, Sergeant Thompson and Sergeant Grindley, were the only ones left. All of our communications back with HQ were cut off; those Reaper ships emitted some sort of electromagnetic resonance that disrupted all radio waves on the island and even disabled our quantum messaging network. Nothing that went on within this field was detectable by outside observers by means other than direct viewing. Certain that we were all that was left and that no one was coming to our rescue, we did an ammo count and determined how much longer we could effectively fight.

During the previous three days of combat, the Reapers' shock troops would sporadically capture and assimilate some of our guys; it seemed as though they were mind-controlled and forced to fight us. They impaled some of my teammates on strange spikes that protruded from the ground, which turned them into mechanical-looking, mindless psychos that relentlessly charged us. There was nothing harder than having to kill my own teammates who were shooting at me.

The sun had fallen, and darkness and a strange quiet and sense of peace permeated the island as we stayed hidden from the enemy. The three of us remained silent, making sure we stayed one step ahead of the aggressors by not giving up our location. We found a hole large enough for the three of us to hide in beneath a tree covered in vines. We took refuge there and I set up an EMP field around us, so we could plan our next move without the fear of a surprise assault. As I set the device on the ground that emitted the EMP field, I looked up and saw one of the Reaper ships floating in the distance, loading and unloading their shock troops. They were planning their next assault, the one that would eliminate us and leave the world open to their will.

I suddenly felt someone shove me, and snapped out of my daydream to Liara telling me to wake the hell up. I shook my head and began walking with her again. Multiple terminals were scattered about this floor of the building, with all kinds of strange-looking aliens I had not seen up until that point. Short, chubby ones that spoke like Darth Vader with asthma, humanoid ones with cybernetic-looking faces and broad build, and another humanoid-looking one whose face was covered by a mask and wore a hood and had every part of their body covered by some kind of fabric. I looked around a bit more and saw more aliens who looked very similar to Liara as well.

"Follow me to my office," she told me as we walked around the terminals and through an opening to our right. I followed her up a staircase and into a round room with her desk sitting right smack in the middle of it. Before we entered the room, she told an assistant by the door to warn her of any strange guests who may pass by to see her.

"I am sending a message to Commander Shepard right now to inform him of you. I'm sure you will be an absolutely valuable asset to his team,"

"Look Ms. T'Soni, am I still playing the role of someone's fucking cargo? Or is this Shepard the real deal?"

"Well he's saved the galaxy twice, I'd say he is the real deal. He has my message now, I suggest you stay here and wait with me until he can get here to Ilium. In the meantime, I can attempt to answer more of your questions," she said. Just as I was getting ready to ask a question, I heard a click and felt the barrel of a gun pointed at the back of my head.

"Mr. Grimm, that was an impressive display of your skills. The Illusive Man is willing to forgive you, however, should you decide to come peacefully with us," the person behind the gun said. That voice was incredibly familiar. It must have been that Lieutenant Royce character from earlier.

"Let me share something with you buddy. I don't appreciate people rudely interrupting conversations I have with other people," I told him, slightly looking down.

"I suggest you lose the attitude and slowly stand up Sergeant," he responded. I gave a quick glance to Liara, who looked shocked but remained motionless. Judging from her actions, she was in someone's crosshairs as well. All that was left was to determine how many of them there were again. I winked at Liara and looked down at my hand, which was showing the number four with my fingers, after my wink caught her attention. She looked down at my hand, then back up to my face and slightly nodded. I closed my eyes for a short moment, then opened them as I began to stand up.

When I was halfway up, I lifted my right elbow, knocking myself out of the Lieutenant's crosshairs. As I did this I pulled the pistol out from beneath my jacket, turned around as he started shooting upward, and shot him twice in the chest. The slugs penetrated his shield as I shot in the exact same spot and inflicted a bloody wound on his chest. As he started falling, I moved my left arm beneath his right around, turned his rifle around, and shot the other three mercenaries using his shoulders to stabilize the weapon. All of the mercenaries then fell to the ground, bleeding onto Liara's carpet. I slipped my pistol back beneath my jacket and turned back around to face Liara.

"Tell this Shepard guy to get here soon. I've had my share of attempted kidnapping and murder for my first day back now,"


	4. Chapter 4:  New Arrival

_**Ch. 4: New Arrival**_

A day passed by as I waited for this Commander Shepard to arrive at Nos Astra, Ilium. Liara took the time to share a great deal of knowledge with me; from the council alien races and non-council ones to the mass relays and the power of mass effect, then to her time working with Shepard to combat some rogue council spectre named Saren. She also told me about the crew Shepard was working with at the time. A number of them went off to gather allies and reunite broken alliances in preparation for the Reaper invasion while the ones who stayed to work with him had a more personal connection with him. Still with him, and who I would presumably meet, were a Turian named Garrus Vakarian, a Krogan named Urdnot Grunt, two former Cerberus operatives named Jacob Taylor and Miranda, two humans named Kasumi Goto and Jack, a Salarian named Mordin Solus, a "good" Geth named Legion, and a Quarian named Tali Zorah vas Normandy. Those who left the Normandy SR-2 following the mission on the Collector homeworld were an Asari Justicar named Samara, a Drell named Thane Krios, and a mercenary named Zaeed Moussani. What a colorful cast.

I simply could not believe how much things changed since I was in cryo. From us humans thinking we were the only things roaming the universe to being accepted into an incredibly diverse intergalactic community. Biotic development in humans, interstellar travel, things I just could not imagine possible during what seemed to be my previous life. I thought my space combat training in orbit around Jupiter on its moon Europa was incredible; that used to be a two week long flight, now it was a matter of seconds.

While Liara was talking to security officials to clear up the whole gunslinging incident I had just had the day before, I changed into my old digital camouflage trousers and combat boots I was wearing while I was in cryo and threw on a black t-shirt then took a stroll down from her office to the trading floor. Damn security there was slow to respond to things. I walked over to the railing and gazed out at the vast city from there. I then turned around and approached one of the trade kiosks to investigate how it worked. Just as I was about to press one of the buttons, a Volus merchant bumped into me.

"You, out of my way Human clan, I was here first," he shouted at me, so to speak. Grinning at the situation, I decided to instigate some more.

"Have you ever heard of something called manners, buddy? I think you sure could use some," I responded.

"Yeah well have you heard of a busy Volus trying to do some business? I could care less about manners at the moment, Human,"

"Well, would you maybe care a bit more if I put a fist in your face?"

"Okay okay, no need for violence, Human clan. I am just trying to do business here," he responded. I did not think it would be so easy to get him to back down.

"It's okay buddy, I'll let you off the hook for now, but you better watch yourself next time," I answered back with a devilish grin and walked away. I was constantly mesmerized by the giant buildings forming an artificial skyscape in the background. This was an incredibly advanced world. Just as I began approaching another kiosk, Liara came down from her office and approached me.

"Mr. Grimm, everything from the incident has been cleared up. Shepard has informed me that he will be arriving here in about two hours. I encourage you to talk to more of the locals, just get a feel for what this new universe for you is like. But don't let the elegant look of this place fool you, it is just as corrupt and dangerous as any other place in the galaxy. Please, just be wary," she said to me.

"Liara, I grew up poor and in the slums on Earth, surrounded by nothing but violence and poverty. I've dealt with more adversity than you can possibly care to imagine. I'm pretty sure I can handle myself," I responded. She simply nodded then walked to a doorway close by and proceeded through a hallway.

I looked around a bit and noticed a sign by another staircase that said "Eternity". Liara had mentioned that club earlier when we were talking, so I decided to go ahead and check it out. I walked up the stairs, passing by a few Asari and Turians who were having a conversation and nodded to them as I passed by. I walked through another corridor with a galactic news terminal, but passed on hearing the news for the prospect of getting another drink. I then walked through another doorway and into the dimly lit Eternity club. There were patrons of all races present; a Quarian and an Asari talking, a couple of fellow humans having a drink, and some Turians and Salarians chatting up an Asari bartender among others. Some very calm, almost mystical-sounding music was playing. I decided to see what kinds of drinks were available at the bar, so I walked up and took a seat next to the Turians and Salarians.

"How's it going ma'am," I said to the Asari bartender.

"Doing just fine. I don't think I've seen you around here before," she responded.

"Yeah I've been getting that a lot,"

"So what's your story? You look like you've got a lot to say,"

"More than you could even care to know,"

"Fair enough. How about a drink? You look like you should cool your nerves a bit,"

"You read my mind. I'll take the strongest thing you have,"

"Well I won't give you the strongest. Not meant for your DNA it will melt your insides. But I'm sure this will do," she responded as she passed me a shot glass with a red liquid in it. Without hesitation, I downed it and slid the glass back over to her. I had some strong stuff in my past life but damn, this easily outdid everything. My throat burned pretty bad, but I kept my poise and refused to give more of a reaction than a smirk on my face. It was at that point that I realized that I had no "credits" on me to cover it.

"I am sorry, I don't have any credits on me," I said to her.

"Don't worry about it. Liara has all of your expenses on Illium covered. Would you like another?" she responded. That surprised me a bit.

"No thanks, I think I'm just gonna relax in the lounge," I said as the shot hit me. I wasn't drunk, but it definitely got me a little bit tipsy; my tolerance sure went down while I was in cryo. I walked over to a couch around the corner of the bar area and sat down at the table, again gluing my eyes to the scenery from the balcony to my right. A female Quarian then sat down on the couch across the table from me and let out a sigh, shaking her head and threw something down on the table. Curiosity got the best of me, so I decided to initiate my first conversation with a Quarian.

"You alright over there?" I asked.

"What? Oh yes, sorry I'm fine," she responded, looking down at the datapad she threw on the table.

"I don't believe you. What's going on with you?"

"Nothing, don't worry about it. I don't even know you, why would I tell you?"

"Well let me start over. I'm Blaine," I responded, leaning to the table and extending a hand to hers. She hesitantly extended hers to mine.

"Mari, Mari'Sal nar Tayya," she said as she shook my hand. What a mouthful. With a smile, I continued my conversation with her.

"Pleased to meet you Mari,"

"Nice to meet you too, Blaine. I'm sorry I just have so much going on I am so frustrated,"

"I understand. If I can help you with something just…" I said as I was cut off by some Turian who came over to the table and tapped on her shoulder.

"You better figure out how to fix this fast. I'm not going to wait forever while you chat with this human," the asshole said. Not appreciating the interruption, I interjected.

"Excuse me. I suggest you be polite to the lady. And I also suggest you do not interrupt me when I am speaking again," I sternly said to him.

"Human, you better mind your business. I do not care for your concerns, I will interrupt whoever I need to. You are of no significance to me," he responded. Angered, I stood up and walked up to him so he could look at me face to face.

"Blaine, don't," Mari said. I ignored her of course.

"I'm going to tell you this once. I'm the last person, human, or whatever whose path you want to cross. So if you want to keep your face in one piece, have some respect. I want to help Ms. Mari out, so maybe you should tell me what's going on so I can assist her,"

"It's none of your damn business. She owes us a pretty hefty amount of credits, something I'm sure you can't help her with. She either needs to pay us back or she will need to enlist in being an indentured servant with us," he said. When he said the words "indentured servant", I could see her shudder from the corner of my eye. I had no tolerance for that.

"Her being your 'indentured servant' is out of the question. Give her a payment plan or something instead,"

"Not happening human. I really suggest you don't make a scene, I have people who will make your life a living hell if you escalate this further," he said as he grabbed her by the arm and shoved me back. I immediately grabbed his wrist and broke his hand from her and twisted it so he could not move his arm without breaking it. He then drew a pistol from his side with his other arm so I quickly hit him square in that wrist, forcing him to drop the gun. I then let go of his restrained wrist and headbutted him hard, knocking him to the ground unconscious. As if on cue, three more Turians charged towards me. The first one threw a punch at me, so I sidestepped and put my knee hard in his gut. As he fell to the ground, the other two attacked at the same time. I methodically turned their attacks against them and layed them out on the ground as well. I then walked back over to the original one and slapped his face a few times until he was conscious again.

"We're going to make a deal right now. Mari is released from her debt, and you and your boys get to walk away alive. Got it?"

"Yes," he responded in a daze.

"Good," I said and walked back over to the awe-stricken Mari.

"You ok?" I asked as I kneeled beside her.

"Yes. Thank you so much," she responded, sounding like she was in tears. She then got up and gave me a hug. I didn't know what to make of it, receiving a hug from an alien. It was strangely nice though, so I returned the motion.

"You just let me know if these assholes, or anyone else for that matter, give you shit again," I said to her, in a purposely loud voice as I looked at the group of Turians as they stumbled out of Eternity. She nodded her head as we released our hug.

"Impressive. You should work as a bouncer here. If I have to get rid of idiots from here they end up getting hurt pretty bad, which never looks good for business," the Asari bartender called out to me with a grin on her face. I grinned back to her then turned around and sat back down on the couch across from Mari. We then had a pretty long conversation. She told me all about Quarian culture and history while I told her about my past and why I was so clueless about everything. The only part I did not reveal to her was my past combat experience with the Reapers; I wasn't sure how touchy a subject that was to speak about. We spent about an hour talking, during which I proceeded to have a few more shots to keep the nice buzz I had going. At that point I knew it was about that time to get back to Liara's office, since Shepard was supposed to be there then. I walked over to Mari and gave her a hug and told her I had to get going. I asked her if there was any way to keep in contact, and she told me that the Quarian Tali who I would soon meet would be able to make that happen. I then walked out of Eternity and back out to the trading floor.

I spotted Liara, walking onto the trading floor from the docking bay with a male human with N7 armor on and a Quarian and a Turian by his side. I walked towards them and we all stopped just short of each other.

"Sergeant Grimm, I am Commander Shepard. Pleased to meet you," he said and extended his hand to me. I returned the gesture.

"So, it's Reapers we're after," I responded.

"Yes. They're coming and they're planning on exterminating every living thing in the galaxy, but I don't think they counted on someone who has already fought and defeated some of their kind to be alive and part of the fight,"

"Well I think they have some bigger problems. I'm not satisfied with killing a few of them for killing my teammates and best friends and for bringing my life at the time to a stop. They didn't manage to kill me, and that's a giant mistake on their part. I want all of them dead," I responded.

"You sound like the exact guy we want to help us do this. Damn glad to have you on the team, my name is Garrus Vakarian," he said to me.

"And I am Tali'Zorah vas Normandy, pleased to have you with us," she followed up.

"Let me make one thing clear. Just because we have the same goals, doesn't mean I am all of a sudden your puppet. I don't know any of you, and I have a number of things I'd like to take care of before I start worrying about the Reapers," I responded.

"Liara, I have the information you need to take down the Shadow Broker. For real this time," Shepard said to her after he nodded his head to my statement.

"Are you sure?" she responded.

"Positive. Tali, Garrus, go with Sergeant Grimm back to the Normandy and get him acclimated on board while we take care of this," he said and walked with her up the stairs to her office. I then turned around to my new comrades.

"Well, shall we?" I said with a smirk.


	5. Chapter 5: Reflections

_**Ch. 5: Reflections**_

We walked together through the check-in area to the docking bay, not talking about anything. I followed them through the decontamination chamber to enter the Normandy, then finally set foot onto the ship. Immediately to my left was the cockpit.

"Sergeant Grimm, this is Joker, he is the pilot of the Normandy," Tali said, introducing me to him as he spun around in his chair to face me.

"How's it going? Glad to have you on our team," he said, to which I responded with a simple nod. He turned back around to his controls and I then followed Tali and Garrus down the main corridor to what appeared to be the heart of the ship. A giant galaxy map was projected in the middle and numerous crew members operated computers and other machinery around the area.

"I'll leave the tour to you Tali, I was in the middle of cleaning some weapons before we got here," Garrus said.

"Sure you were Garrus," she responded. He gave her a smirk then walked away. Two humans then walked through a doorway to my right and approached me, one a female wearing a skin-tight outfit and the other a male dressed in a black and white outfit similar to what the rest of the crew members were wearing.

"Sergeant Grimm, I am Miranda, second in command on this ship,"

"I'm Jacob, former Corsairs. My unit was directly modeled after Phantom-2. It is an honor to get this opportunity to work with you," he said, extending his hand to me. I returned the gesture.

"And I thought I wasn't going to get to work with anyone familiar with my expertise," I responded with a grin.

Suddenly I was back in the jungle again. I had just finished setting up our EMP field as I watched what looked to be a squad size force of Reaper troops land on the ground about a click away, near an opening in the canopy. Through my monocular I could see the 8-foot tall blue, half organic half machine beings begin their search for us. I realized that was our chance to expose them; up until that point, we had been engaged in fierce combat with large groups of them. There were only eight of them that time. I quickly worked out a plan with Thompson and Grindley to capture one and kill the rest. There was no easy step; killing them was just about as hard as getting one alive.

Once we had our plan together, we exited the EMP field and split up. Thompson scaled a large tree to the west while I circled around some brush to get a flanking position on the east. Meanwhile, Grindley advanced directly towards them. I scaled a decent sized rock to gain a positional advantage, using micro-terrain techniques to remain hidden. I looked over at Thompson in the tree who gave me a thumbs up, then back down to Grindley, who set up three tripwires in the bushes in front of him. He gave me a thumbs up as well then retreated about twenty meters back to a small marshy spot where he concealed himself entirely in swamp muck, keeping only his head and rifle above the liquid level.

I took another look back to Thompson, then gave all of my attention to the Reaper troops. Their heavy footsteps rumbled in my ear as they approached our trap, only getting louder and louder with every step. I gazed up into the sky momentarily, and saw how eerily clear it was. Minus the Reapers, it was a beautiful night out on these islands; a light breeze whisked through the air, the temperature was pretty comfortable for a tropical jungle, the sky was clear as ever, and the sounds of the night creatures permeated the island. I had to snap back to reality, however, and focus my sight back on the aliens. They finally stopped about five meters short of our boobytrap, and began to sniff around the area. I stayed completely hidden from their sight, wondering if they had detected the trap somehow. I grew impatient as the next minute passed by, thinking Grindley was sloppy in setting the wires up and failed to properly conceal them. Grindley then radioed in to me.

"Blaine, I'm going to make a run for it. Draw them right into the trap so you guys can ambush them," he said.

"You know how good they are with their weapons. I don't advise it," I responded.

"Look they know something is up. I'm going to do it," he said back to me. Without hesitation, he then sprang up from his hiding spot and shouted at the Reaper troops, who immediately turned their heads to him. He then sprinted as fast as he could directly across from them. They began firing as they sprinted after him until they finally hit the trap. The explosion let out a concussive shockwave, but me and Thompson immediately opened fire. Four of the troops were blown almost in half and the others were pretty banged up from the blast. I quickly focused on one of them and laid down six shots square in its forehead until it finally stumbled and fell backwards. Thompson took out another one of them as I began targeting the others. At that point it was a no-brainer. We killed the other two mobile ones then picked off three of the legless ones. The last one alive attempted to fire a plasma beam at Thompson, but I shot its hand four times and it dropped its weapon. I jumped down from the rock and Thompson slid down from his tree and we both rushed over to the downed enemy.

"Good job Grindley, get back over here, we have our prisoner," I radioed in to him, but received no response.

"Grindley, come in," I again said, but still got no response. I then told Thompson to keep an eye on the alien as I started moving the same direction Grindley ran off to when he got the Reaper troops' attention. I moved through some brush then finally found him, lying lifeless on the ground. One of the plasma rounds hit him square in the back and burned right through his chest. My head dropped as I radioed to Thompson and told him Grindley was gone. We had been through so much together; from completing Phantom-2 indoc together, to hunting down the vicious genocide-happy warlord Marl Sad Abhani all throughout the middle east and finally assassinating him, to conducting the successful hostage rescue of Admiral Gene Decks after he was captured by a radical anarchist society responsible for unspeakable horrors in South America, to this, fighting for our lives against a savage alien force. I was going to miss him. He was a true brother to me. I slammed my fist hard into the ground.

"Sergeant Grimm, wake up," I heard as I returned to consciousness. I was lying on top of a medical table with a Salarian and a female human with gray hair looking down at me. I turned my head and saw Tali standing not too far away, as well as another female human with a dark, hooded suit on. I guess I had become some sort of a celebrity on the Normandy.

"He's fine Doctor Chakwas, he's still suffering post-cryo symptoms," the Salarian said to the female medical officer.

"How long was I out for?" I managed to sputter out.

"About six minutes. You're lucky Tali was there to catch you when you fainted or else you would have smashed your head on some controls," Dr. Chakwas responded to me.

"Go figure," I lazily responded as I sat up, vigorously rubbing my eyes, still a bit under duress from my flashback.

"Sergeant Grimm, this is Mordin Solus, our chief research expert. Doctor Chakwas, our chief medical officer. And this is Kasumi Goto, thief extraordinaire," Tali said to me, introducing me to everyone in the room.

"Just call me Blaine, or Grimm. The Sergeant part isn't necessary," I said as I rubbed my forehead and stood up from the table.

"So, Mr. Grimm, I hear you're quite the warrior," Kasumi said to me with a grin on her face.

"Yeah I guess you could say that. What do you guys have to eat on here? I don't think I've had anything to eat since I've been revived," I responded. After some more small talk, I followed Kasumi, Mordin, and Tali out of the medical area and into what seemed to be a lounge with a small kitchen attached. I was introduced to the cook Mess Sergeant Rupert, who began making us some food. It was not until after I started eating his meal that I realized that those MRE's I forced myself to eat back in South America and the Middle East were gourmet compared to what was served nowadays. After I finished inhaling my food, I noticed that Tali was not eating anything.

"What's up Tali? Not a fan of the food?" I asked.

"No it's not that. My body's chemistry doesn't allow me to eat the same things the rest of you do. It can be harmful and even fatal for me," she responded.

"Well that's no fun. What kind of stuff do you eat then?"

"You don't even want to know," she said with a sarcastic laugh.

"So what if I eat the food you Quarians eat?"

"Well, simply put you die," she responded.

"Your insides more or less melt. And you likely feel it as it happens, so it's quite a painful death. We fed the food once to a cat. It ran around insanely, hacking its guts up, quite literally until it fell over. Then the rest of its insides just poured out from both ends…" Mordin explained.

"Alright I get it, I deflate. But why a cat?" I responded.

"Unfortunate accident. We were going to feed it regular cat food, but my assistant instead grabbed the wrong formula and put it in the cat's dish. I'm still unsure of whether he intentionally did that or not,"

"And that assistant is NOT on this ship, right?" I demanded to know.

"No no no, last I heard he was still on Omega. But that was a while ago, I don't know now,"

"So Mr. Grimm, how are you doing? Like honestly?" Kasumi asked me. It seemed like a simple enough question to answer, but at the moment, after finally having a chance to relax and let my nerves calm from all of the altercations from the previous day and a half, I started to put things into perspective. I hesitated answering her, as I let my thoughts gather.

"I don't even know where to begin. I appreciate you all taking me warmly into your crew. I'm just trying to adjust to what has changed. My family… is gone. My fiancé is dead, all of my close friends are gone, I don't even know if the few people still alive from my past life know that I am here. And shit, forty-eight hours ago I was thinking alien bacteria was the most advanced form of extraterrestrial life in the universe," I responded.

"Yeah that's crazy, it must be a hell of a culture shock," Kasumi said back to me. That was when the exhaustion just hit me out of nowhere, and it hit me hard.

"Well I knew what I signed up for when I was recruited to be part of a Black Ops team… If I was captured or killed in combat, the government would deny my existence, that kind of stuff. I just didn't think it would end up with me being frozen and revived when everyone I knew was gone. Listen I don't mean to be rude, but where can I crash? If I stay at this table any longer I'm probably going to pass out on you guys," I said.

"Of course, follow me," Tali responded. I said bye to Mordin and Kasumi, then got up from the table with Tali. She then led me to the Crew's Quarters and even gave me my own private room, complete with a pretty comfortable looking bed.

"If you need anything, I'll be a level below in engineering,"

"Actually before you go, I made a friend on Ilium. Her name is Mari, Mari'Sal nar Tayya. Is there any way you can get us in contact with each other?"

"Yes I will get communication lines open with the Tayya while you rest. Now go to sleep tough guy, you really look like you need it," she responded, then left, closing the door behind her. I'm not sure what was more appalling to me, how similar aliens physically and socially were to humans, generally speaking of course, or how I felt as though I seamlessly slipped into the cast of characters. Not that I was expecting some sort of hostility from them, but that I didn't seem to feel any ambiguity about them myself.

I removed my boots and trousers and took off my shirt and lied down in the bed. I had not felt comfortable and relaxed like that in a while. I pressed a button to my left that opened the shutters to a window and looked out at Nos Astra for a few minutes, observing the endless, but organized traffic and "sunset", then closed it. I then closed my eyes, and drifted to sleep.

I then cautiously advanced forward through the desert. It was Day Three of Operation Cutthroat, with Sergeant Grindley and myself stalking through the deserts of Aghanistan, searching for Marl Sad Abhani, the world's most wanted terrorist at the time. The bastard had an incredible ring of information; he was capable of finding out where any single person on the planet lived and could most likely have them abducted or killed. One day before we launched our mission to take him down, he showcased his intelligence-capability by having his henchmen abduct the German chancellor and bring her somewhere in the Middle East desert. He then sent a warning to the world to respect his sovereignty and sliced her throat right in front of the world on a television broadcast.

In response, the entire world publicly admonished Abhani, but no one offered a solution for taking him down. Everyone was too afraid of protecting their own heads. It wasn't until later that day, when our contact in Egypt uncovered a pending transaction between Abhani and a corrupt group of scientists to transfer control of forty nuclear warheads, that Phantom-2 was activated and Grindley and myself were chosen to infiltrate the middle east and use any means necessary to find and take Abhani down. His group had the strength of a full power military and was just as efficient at collecting intel as the CIA, which made our mission incredibly tricky. Because of this, we were given no intel, and our orders were simply to find and kill Marl Sad Abhani and locate any intelligence that could be useful to locating the scientists and the nuclear warheads.

Grindley and I determined that linking up with and unifying local militant groups who opposed Abhani was our best bet to establishing a perfect diversion and counter-resistance. As soon as we had a group together that was capable of conducting a serious attack on Abhani's military, we could slip in the cover of the fight and find Abhani while we has vulnerable and kill him. Piece of cake.

It was a very bitter, cold night. Grindley and I wore thermal facemasks with the Phantom-2 skull gracing the outside. We carried eighty pound packs, but we got so used to carrying such heavy loads during training that it felt second nature. We both wore desert-camouflage boonie hats and "isomorphic" digital desert BDU's that adjusted to our current lighting situations. With heavily customized M-20's in the grips of our tactical assault gloved-hands, we moved through the blistering cold of the night and fought against the heavy gusts of wind. Every time the wind blew, I could feel my revolver press very firmly against my chest right next to some clips for my M-20. Interestingly enough, Abhani had given that revolver to one of his military leaders who we took down a few months before that in Turkmenistan. I recovered the revolver at his palace and kept it with me ever since.

I signaled to Grindley to stop as we approached a cave structure. At that point, we were searching for the leader of a militant group called Al-Jysh, literally translating to The Army. We took a knee and I flipped open my GPS dock on my wrist and determined that we were at the predetermined meeting spot. I used my implanted ocular-detection system to cycle through night and thermal visions, looking for any signs of people nearby, but found nothing. Everyone who became a member of Phantom-2 had their eyes bioengineered; series of lenses were inserted that were fused to our nerve stems, thus giving us full functionality through the simple use of our brains. These lenses provided us with thermal and night vision capabilities, flawless vision, and unmatchable sharpness.

We quickly took up a defensive posture, fully aware that it was possible that our Al-Jysh contacts could easily be hitmen or double agents for Abhani. I transmitted a message to Al-Jysh, letting them know we were in country and awaiting them at the rendezvouz point. About twenty minutes later, two dark figures wearing robes began approaching us in the distance. We fixed our sights directly on them, unable to discern whether they were our contacts, Abhani's men, or simply farmers from the countryside. I pulled out my voice detector and aimed it at them, trying to pick up any conversation they were having. For the first few seconds, all I received was static, but then it cleared up and I was able to start eavesdropping on their conversation.

It was a good thing that I wasn't a very trusting person, especially working directly with the Agency, because the two were in fact Abhani's men posing as double agents; they were discussing how to approach us so they could lead us into an ambush about one mile away. Abhani's intelligence ring even had the CIA in check and knew about Grindley and myself being sent in to take him out. But because we were given complete mission autonomy, he had no idea how we planned to do it. I used my GPS dock to send a message to HQ, and informed them that their own information network had been compromised and that Abhani knew we were coming.

Two minutes later, the two double agents arrived. Instead of greeting them, we immediately attacked them and knocked them both unconscious. We then threw them over our shoulders and walked with them into the cave system. We set them down and woke them back up, pressing our knives against their throats.

"Listen here you piece of shit, you only have one way out of this alive. Tell me where Marl Sad Abhani is," I firmly told the guy I had at knifepoint.

"Go to hell American coward," he responded and spit in my face.

"Wrong answer. I'm not one to give second chances, but I'm fresh from my last cheating girlfriend. One more time. Where is Marl Sad Abhani?" I responded back, pressing my knife harder into his windpipe, on the verge of drawing blood.

"I will never tell you. You are from the land of evil. He gives us a land of promise,"

"Fair enough," I responded and hit him hard in the temple with the handle of my knife. Barbaric as it may seem, but this was a Black Operation; I could not afford to be restrained, kind, or humane. I picked him back up, understanding that he was ready to be a martyr for Abhani's dictatorship and pulled out my revolver and put the barrel to his head, lightly squeezing the trigger. It was time to put the heat on his friend.

"Now you," I said to the other guy, as Grindley put his knife away and let him sit there.

"Tell me where Abhani is or I will marry your friend's brain to a bullet," I calmly told him.

"I don't know where he is, that is the truth!" he shouted back.

"How sure are you about that answer?" Grindley demanded, pulling out his Z-9 pistol and pointing it directly at the guy's face. At this point, the poor guy was shaking and sweating almost uncontrollably.

"I am sure! I don't know where he is!"

"Well what about your friend? Does he know and just not want to tell me?"

"No! No one knows where he is! We simply work for him, that is it! We take orders and do what he asks of us, but only his top generals know where he is!"

"Well if neither of you can provide me with any useful intel, then what use is there in letting the two of you live?" I said, squeezing the trigger a bit more.

"I can tell you where one of his lieutenants lives. That is the best I can do," he responded and pulled out a small piece of paper with some grid coordinates on it then handed it over to me.

"Well you seem pretty quick to cooperate unlike your friend here. You trying to pull another job on us?" I yelled as I forcefully shoved his friend to the ground and rotated positions with Grindley.

"No, I just don't trust Abhani. He claims to have been taking divine orders from some higher power. No traditional God of any religions. He acts strange, he almost acts like he is not in control of himself sometimes. He claims that voices speak to him of an upcoming cataclysmic event, and that he must make sure that certain things are not discovered or else the future will not unfold the way it is supposed to,"

"What is he trying to prevent from being discovered?"

"Why do you think your government's mission to dig deeper into Mars has been put on hold? He knows no one will risk a mission up there knowing what he is capable of doing,"

"So he is trying to keep the entire world's community from landing on Mars? What the fuck does he care about that rock?"

"He claims these voices tell him of something about Mars that must not be uncovered, that is all I know. According to him, a major event that will change everything we know is going to occur soon and Mars has something to do with it,"

"Roger that. Good night," I said as Grindley and I injected them with neurotoxins to knock them unconscious. We had our next target's location, so I used my GPS dock to send another message back to HQ, advising them to pick up two persons of extreme interest. I assumed they would send another Phantom-2 team to pick up the packages, so I talked to Grindley and we discussed our next moves.

I snapped back out of my vivid reflection to find the Normandy in motion. I opened the window to my left and found myself looking at the most insane thing I had ever seen up to that point in my life: a superstructure surrounded by lightning and dark, swirling clouds. We must have gone into transit while I was napping, so I threw my boots and uniform back on and darted out of my room just to run right into some bald-headed female.

"Watch it asshole," she said with an attitude and kept moving along. That must have been Jack, or Subject Zero.

"Hey, wait a minute where are we?" I demanded.

"The fucking Shadow Broker's base. Hope you're rested up, because if things don't go well for Shepard and Liara, we're going in to rescue them,"

"What's going on?"

"Shepard and Liara went in to kill the Shadow Broker,"

"Sounds good," I responded, strangely hoping they would need some help as I was itching for some combat after that sleep.


	6. Chapter 6: A New Revelation

_**Ch. 6: A New Revelation**_

I followed Jack onto an elevator and we took it back up to the galaxy map, rendezvousing with the rest of the crew. Everyone was gathered directly in front of the map, conversing amongst themselves. I then ran into the rest of the crew that I had not met yet. The Krogan, Urdnot Grunt, bumped directly into me as I walked by him.

"Finally someone with some muscle is on this ship," he said. I took it as a greeting of sorts and exchanged a handshake with him.

"Maybe we can arm wrestle some time," I responded, with a smile on my face as I shook his hand. He chuckled a bit as I let the handshake go and turned around. In my face was a machine of some sort with a glowing "eye" for a face.

"Grimm, Blaine. This eventuality was expected," it said to me.

"I presume you're Legion?" I responded.

"Yes. That is what I am referred to by the rest of this ship's crew. We have studied much about you and are very interested in you,"

"Who studied me? Everyone on this ship?"

"No. We,"

"Excuse him Sergeant, apparently A.I. of his kind refer to themselves in plural. Some kind of multi-platform business or something," Garrus interjected. Legion then looked at Garrus then back at me.

"Yes," Legion said.

"So what does a machine know about me?" I asked.

"Grimm, Blaine born in the Bronx, New York in the United States of America on planet Earth. Father left shortly after you were born, mother unable to work due to chronic debilitating disease, you and your brother provided care for her. Five feet ten inches tall, you weigh about two hundred forty-two pounds. Mixed heritage approximately thirty percent African, sixty-one percent Caucasian roots, and the final nine percent a mix of other ethnicities. Star football player in high school, played in the "running back" and "defensive end" positions, first football player to obtain a role on the offense and a role on the defense of the All-American team, and set records still not broken for number of yards ran in one season and number of sacks made in one season. Given the nickname "The Grimm Reaper" by former teammates. Passed on achieving higher education after the death of brother Grimm, Chuck 'The Force', a former Green Beret and lieutenant in your Army who was captured by terrorists and executed in a live broadcast to the world. Reason to join military was by quote "To kill the mother fuckers who killed my brother". Enlisted in the United States Navy at age 18 and became a fully qualified Navy SEAL at age 20. After a number of successful missions even we could not find the information to, you cross-trained with Force Reconnaissance Marine teams, then you were selected for the SEAL DEVGROUP and recruited to the United States Army's Delta Force. You cross-trained with paramilitary groups and other worldwide special forces units until being selected to work with the Central Intelligence Agency's Special Activities Division. After further evaluation, you and approximately one hundred paramilitary operatives and special forces troops from your planet were selected to join Phantom-2, the first unit formed in cohesion of the nations on Planet Earth and served as the precursor to the formation of the Alliance. Some of your sensory and cognitive functions were partially bioengineered when becoming part of this unit, and became the first military unit with the purpose of "engaging and defeating hostile extraterrestrial threats", although entirely classified. While part of Phantom-2, you engaged in your species' first encounter with intelligent alien life, the Old Machines, or as you call them, the Reapers. You were the only survivor of the attack, however your actions saved the planet. You destroyed a total of four Reaper vessels, but evidence of the battle was eliminated and you were then cryogenically frozen. The galaxy in general was unaware of your existence until now," Legion laid it all out on me. Shocked, I could not bring myself to interrupt him at any point and listened to him fill in a few of the holes that were still there in my memory.

"That's a hell of a resume," a voice said from across the bridge. It was Shepard, walking towards the group.

"Damn glad to have you on the team," he then said with a smile, giving me a firm handshake. I returned the handshake and gave a confident smile back.

"Shepard what happened on the Shadow Broker's ship? Where is Liara?" Garrus asked.

"He's dead. Liara is the new Shadow Broker now," he responded.

"But doesn't that sound a little, um, fishy?"

"Nothing to worry about, she is still on our side. And she can easily be our most useful source of intelligence now,"

"So what's the deal? Where are the Reapers?" I asked.

"The last we knew, they were in Dark Space preparing to enter our galaxy. The Collector General sent us data on them just before it was killed. That was about a week ago," he responded.

"So is the galactic community prepared for them?"

"The damn Council still won't accept the fact that they are coming. No formal warning or declaration was sent to any primary military. We need to figure a way to rally everyone fast, maybe tap in to their communications networks,"

"How many Reapers are coming?"

"I don't know. Their entire force most likely, probably numbering in at least the hundreds. They have been thwarted now three times by us humans, and they probably see humanity as a threat now and will throw everything they got at us,"

"Well we need to figure out how to convince everyone, like now. They are incredibly ruthless and efficient and if we're not prepared, we won't stand a chance,"

"Trust me, I can agree with you on that. Just one of them killed thousands a little over two years ago in our effort to kill it, so I need to know, how did you manage to take out four of them alone?" Shepard responded. When he said that, everyone else looked directly at me, including Legion. It was strange to see a machine act in that way.

"Firstly, I didn't act alone. I lost my best friends in that battle, and they helped me defeat those Reapers,"

"I understand," Shepard said.

"I put key emphasis on efficiency. They are incredibly efficient, but to the point where they become fanatics. Their goal was to kill and harvest every single human present in that battle against them. So when my teammate Thompson and I were the only ones left and they realized it, they dispatched everything they had to find us. They were initially hell-bent on making sure we died too. Thompson was badly wounded with a chest wound, so I picked him up and hid him in some canopy and put up an EMP field around him,"

"You must have been incredibly exhausted," Tali chimed in, staring at me.

"I was very exhausted, but my physical ability and what was at stake were the things that kept me going. I could constantly evade them, but they had no intention of letting me go. My team helped me figure out how to kill their Husks and other biomechanical freaks earlier in the battle after we managed to capture one alive. Once I knew how to easily dispatch them, I would lure the Reaper ships into unloading more of their troops to come find me. I would kill them, evade, and repeat the process. It got to the point where I accepted that I was going to die. But I did not accept defeat. Regardless of how exhausted I got, I kept evading and eliminating their forces. The thing I noticed though, was that there was always a short break period between when they would send their troops after me,"

"How long of a time period?" Shepard asked.

"Just a few minutes. It seemed like the Reapers needed time to reset and rebuild in between each wave of troops. I was getting incredibly tired, my body was getting closer to giving out on me. I knew I didn't have much time, but I needed a distraction. I ran back over at one point to Thompson, who had stood up on his own, despite the hole in his chest. We were both out of adrenaline shots, so I had nothing else to keep him going. He told me he knew his time was about up, and offered to put himself out there to distract the Reapers while I made one final search for a weakness. Of course I refused, but the one person you can't dissuade is a man on his deathbed. He didn't listen to me and ran out into the open, collapsing to his knees. All I could do was watch as the Reapers unloaded more Husks, but I didn't. He gave his life to help me out, so I refused to let his efforts go in vain,"

"You rarely see those kinds of heroics nowadays," Kasumi commented.

"I heard him fire his rifle as I sprinted back through to the other side of the jungle. The firing eventually stopped, but as it stopped, I tripped over a black box laying next to one of our downed choppers. I jumped back to my feet and realized exactly what it was: the prototype tactical nuke launcher we called the DBR-0, which stood for Deathbringer Model 0. I think it developed into what you call the M-920 Cain now. We lost it when the Reapers shot our chopper down as we prepared to engage them. I pounced on top of the box, ripped it open and grabbed the six warheads it came with and slung it over my shoulder as I rushed to the edge of the jungle,"

"But nothing can penetrate a Reaper's shields, not even nukes," Shepard said.

"Here's the kicker, while their troops were doing God knows what with Thompson, I looked up and noticed that the blue aura around the Reapers was gone. I aimed my rifle and shot it at one of the Reapers, of course getting their attention but seeing the bullet create a spark on its side. The shield was down. Without any further hesitation, I loaded one of the warheads into the DBR, flipped up the hologram scope, and fired it between the legs of it and into its underbelly. The explosion was enormous, and the shockwave sent me back about a hundred feet or so and made me black out for a few seconds. The Reaper cracked up the middle and fell apart. The other Reapers emitted some kind of sonic signal that made my ears ring badly. Their actions became very obvious and frantic. Up until that point, they had not used the main weapons of their ships other than to shoot our helicopters and drop pods down, but they began setting the jungle ablaze with lasers,"

"Wait how did they keep creating more Husks? Don't they need actual humans to do that?"

"The only answer I have for you is that the Husks looked eerily familiar to my other Phantom-2 teammates who were killed by them. I can't remember what happened then, all I know is adrenaline took over. All I can remember from that point on is that when it was all said and done, four lifeless Reapers and hundreds of mutilated bodies were scattered all over the island. All six warheads were gone. I was alive, but barely,"

"That makes sense. When we fought Sovereign on the Citadel, his shields were up entirely until he reanimated Saren and fought us through his body. When the Reapers reuse someone or something's body, they make themselves vulnerable," Shepard said.

"Yes, their shields were always up when they sent those mindless Husks after us. When they realized that they were ultimately ineffective, they started sending armed, smarter ones after us. If it relates to what you're saying at all, it's possible the Reapers directly controlled these 'smart' Husks and used them as if they were in their bodies. But when they did this, their shields went down. If they're coming in a big fleet though, their numbers may not require them to use Husks and their other shock troops, so they may not make themselves vulnerable. If that's the case, we need to figure out a way to take down their shields. If they're really such dominant beings whose nature of existence is beyond our realm of comprehension or whatever, then I'm sure they are capable of learning new things. They probably figured out how we beat them those two times, and will either have fixed that problem or don't plan on relying on Husks this time around," I responded back.

"So we either need to find a way to stop them in space or we are gonna have a very messy planetary battle to deal with," Shepard said.

"Shepard, if I had a working piece of Reaper technology from the Collector base, I could possibly reverse engineer it much quicker than anyone at Cerberus can," Mordin said.

"Cerberus has that place locked up. If we try to do it, we will start a war with them," Shepard said.

"Send me in. I can make a covert pick up," I suggested. Mordin and Shepard both looked at me then responded at the same time.

"No," they both said. "Doctor Chakwas says you're still recovering from the symptoms of cryogenic hibernation, and you can randomly phase in and out of consciousness because of it. We need you on our team right now, not as a Cerberus captive," Shepard said.

"You're shitting me," I responded.

"I'm not saying we are going to break in to the Collector Base just yet, but just wait until Doctor Chakwas medically clears you for something like that. I'm going to have a talk with the Illusive Man anyway,"

"Shepard, I'll wait one day. Come tomorrow around whatever fucking galactic time it is right now, I'm going to go there and steal some of the Reaper technology,"

"You couldn't do it without this ship. You have to pass through the Omega 4 Relay. Besides that, the base is right next to the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, not exactly a short trip," Shepard responded.

"Then plan on it. Tomorrow. If you're not ready, I'll find a way to make it happen,"

"That doesn't sound very likely," Miranda said.

"And neither does you or anyone else here stopping me. Don't go there with me lady," I responded, getting only silence in return. "I promise you that I can and will find a way to this Collector station, whether it be by use of this ship or some other means,"

"You are quite arrogant, aren't you?" she responded.

"Negative. I just don't believe in no-win situations," I said back.

"So are you afraid of the Reapers?" Tali asked in a matter-of-fact tone.

"Am I afraid of them? Am I afraid of what they are capable of doing? Am I afraid of their intentions? All yes. I was scared to death when I fought them. But I didn't let that define who I was during that battle. I believed I could win that battle, regardless of how grim the situation was. And look what happened. To quote my old unit's Captain, 'Impossibilities are bullshit', and I believe that,"

"Solid philosophy," Garrus said with a smile.

"Wait a minute, something here doesn't fit in. The Reapers indoctrinate any living thing around them. How did you not get indoctrinated while fighting them? How do we know you're not indoctrinated yourself?" Miranda said.

"I'm sorry, indoctrination? What the hell is that?" I responded.

"They gradually gain control over people's minds the longer you are exposed to them. You will look, act, and seem the same but they begin to control your actions," Shepard responded.

"Well, Miranda. If I were indoctrinated, I'm sure I wouldn't have killed my masters, right? And besides I was only in combat with them for a few days. Is that even enough time to become indoctrinated?"

"No, the indoctrination process can take weeks. It wouldn't make sense if they managed to indoctrinate you in the time period of a few days," Mordin added.

"Alright enough people. Grimm, I'm going to talk to the Illusive Man. If I can't reason with him to give me something we can use and study on our own, we will go to the Collector Base as soon as it's safe. For now, we're going to make a trip to the Citadel. You're the only one left who can try to make an impression on the Council, Grimm. Until then try to relax your mind, it's the only way to speed up your recovery," Shepard said.

"Fine. I do need to warn you, though, that I usually relax my mind by working out. Do you have a facility on this ship or anything like that I can use?"

"The engine room and a few other areas of the ship have heavy objects, but we don't have an actual gym facility on the ship. You'll have to improvise, that's what I do," Jacob said to me.

"Shepard, if you don't mind I would like to speak to you in private about something," Tali said. Shepard nodded back to her and they walked together to the elevator and took it to another part of the ship. Go figure, they didn't have mobile gyms in the future.

"Where are they going?" I curiously asked aloud.

"They are, kind of together," Garrus responded.

"Really? I know a bit about Quarians, how they can't take off their suits and all…"

"Yes, Shepard knows what she looks like beneath the mask and suit, the rest of us have no clue," Garrus said.

"Hey Sergeant Grimm, you have a message waiting for you from a Mari'Sal nar Tayya. You can check it whenever you want on the terminal. Just thought I'd let you know since you're new to the ship and all," Joker said to me over a loudspeaker. After he said that, everyone began to disperse. I could feel the Normandy start to move, and assumed we were pulling away from the Shadow Broker's base. I approached the terminal next to the galaxy map and hit a few buttons until I could log on under my name. I accessed my messages and found the one from Mari. It read:

_Blaine, Tali'Zorah vas Normandy was kind enough to exchange contact information between us. I can't believe you have someone from the Admiralty Board as a crew member of the same ship you're on! That's a real honor. Anyways, thank you again for what you did for me back on Ilium. All charges involving me were dropped (there was nothing bad, I promise!), my debts were cleared, and I was able to return to the Flotilla so I can prepare to continue my Pilgrimage. I wish there was some way I could repay you, maybe some time in the future I can. Take care and keep in touch. Keelah se'Lai._

I smiled then logged out of the terminal, opting to respond to her later. I then noticed some text at the bottom of the screen and took a closer look at it. It said "Current Trajectory: The Citadel". I then took the elevator back to my room and lied back down on my bed, then closed my eyes.

I heard gunfire all around me. The alliance of rebel factions that Sergeant Grindley and I had brought together throughout Pakistan, Afganistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan were doing war with Marl Sad Abhani's military forces. The process took us over three months, and we were finally engaged in a one-time opportunity to complete our mission: to find and kill Abhani. Through numerous interrogations, recovered documents and other intel, and former insurgents for Abhani who converted to our cause, we were able to pinpoint his location, in Bandar Abbas, Iran. The port city was simply a cover up for his operations, and nearly his entire military was stationed there.

Sergeant Grindley was right behind me, as we prepared to cross a war-torn street loaded with insurgents and armored vehicles doing battle with each other. Our objective was in sight: Abhani's palace. The problem was, his men were defending it to the death. I radioed in to our rebel group to converge on the outskirts of the location and draw Abhani's forces away as much as possible. They did just that, which resulted in the most intense firefight I had ever been in the middle of. Using the gunfire itself as cover, I threw heavy gas grenades into the street, completely obscuring everyone's vision. Grindley and I focused to thermal vision and began moving across the street. A five man squad was in our only path that didn't involve dealing with armored vehicles. Determined to maintain a low profile, we quietly approached them, watching them moving around erratically since they could not see anything.

I grabbed the first insurgent by the neck and snapped it, then threw the limp body to the ground as I pulled out one of my three combat knives and threw it at the next one. It sliced directly through his neck. As he fell to the ground, Grindley threw two more knives at the next two and killed them instantly as both knives pierced their skulls. We quickly recovered our knives as the fifth insurgent started shooting his machine gun sporadically in different directions. We briefly took cover and waited for him to reload. As soon as I heard the signature 'click' of an empty magazine, I dove to the ground and rolled in front of him, cut his ACL with my knife, jumped on top of him as he fell to the ground and gave him a fatal blow to his throat with my knife.

The gunfire was intensifying, the tanks around us firing shells everywhere, explosions going off right next to our heads. The volume of the battle was almost throwing my equilibrium off. We had to make sure Abhani did not somehow slip away. We reached the side of the palace after slipping by a few more guards unnoticed and jumped through a window. Once in, we activated the integrated silencing system on our rifles and shot two more hooded insurgents in the room we jumped into. We made our way through a few more hallways, eliminating several more guards with silenced headshots and found a staircase. We took it up, and surprisingly found the palace's master bedroom almost immediately as we got to the top. Rather than bust through the doors, we climbed out a side window and shimmied our way to one of the master bedroom's windows. I peeked inside and could see Abhani, alone and unguarded, hunching over some strange projection on a desk. We quietly opened the window and infiltrated his bedroom, then tiptoed over and pointed our rifles directly at his head.

"Abhani! It all ends here!" I shouted out. He then started laughing at me, still gazing at a strange red projection on his desk. I could not really tell what the projection was, although it looked somewhat like an insect with multiple appendages.

"No, it doesn't…" he responded with an incredibly deep, seemingly inhuman voice, shutting off the projection and standing up to face us.

"Don't move!"

"But why, Blaine Grimm? Tell me, why?" he responded, opening his eyes at us for the first time. His eyes were incredibly strange; they were glowing bright yellow.

"Don't fucking move!" I repeated, squeezing the trigger even more, trying to figure out how he knew my name.

"This is not the end of anything, only the beginning of something that has been going on for a very long time," he continued with his sinister voice and lifeless, evil smile.

"Your reign of terror is over Abhani. This IS the end,"

"You have succeeded in stopping nothing. This is only a temporary inconvenience. You're nothing to us. Your very existence is allowed, and we shall end it. Be aware Blaine Grimm, you have our attention and will experience our wrath," he responded. After he was done speaking, the glow in his eyes disappeared and he seemed to be normal again. Completely disturbed by what he just said, I shot him in the head. Grindley and I then quickly exfiltrated the building and evaded all enemy forces and ran all the way out to one of the ship docks. I sent an encrypted message to our allies stationed in Saudi Arabia, and they extracted us from the war zone. We arrived back in the U.S. hours later and watched the news in the comfort of Phantom-2's headquarters. According to the news anchor, Marl Sad Abhani was killed by the rebels and his forces subsequently surrendered to them. And of course, no U.S. personnel played any role in his demise. That's the way we liked it.

I could not get our encounter with Abhani out of my head. The glowing eyes, inhuman voice, and the threat he gave us. Was I the target? Was my country the target? Then I went off on an extreme tangent and wondered, was humanity the target?

I woke back up from my dream, and everything was beginning to make more sense. Abhani must have been indoctrinated when I encountered him. He was already an incredibly charismatic individual and he became the Reapers' puppet, and they were trying to stop the world from uncovering the secrets on Mars through the use of terror and the threat of nuclear war, even threatening to destroy any vessels being sent to space for the purpose of going to Mars. The world believed him because he always made good with his promises. They did not want us to know of the Protheans, the civilization they destroyed 50,000 years ago. They wanted to remain a secret until they were ready to strike. That must have been why they were so interested in capturing me alive during our battle in the Pacific. I stopped their plans, so they wanted me alive, but instead I ended up thwarting them again. All of that, combined with the fact that Shepard and his crew also stopped them twice, must be why the Reapers were especially eager to eliminate the human species.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are now docked at the Citadel. We'll be here for a day, so if you have any business you need to tend to, you know, take care of it. I'll probably be in one of the bars, so get a drink with me if you want," Joker said over the loudspeaker. I got out of my bed and headed back up to the bridge.


	7. Chapter 7: Reunions

_**Ch. 7: Reunions**_

I watched from the window in my room on the Normandy while I did sets of pull ups on the window frame as we approached the Citadel; it was like something straight out of a sci-fi movie during my time. We were developing battlecruisers and other very large spaceships at the time, but nothing compared in scope to this construct. It was absolutely tremendous and guarded by numerous defenses, including giant cannons and fighter squads. I continued watching our approach as we eventually landed into one of its docking bays. It was obvious it was still undergoing maintenance and clean-up from Sovereign's attack roughly two years before that. I overheard the Citadel flight control group clearing us to land, and kept doing pull ups as we came to a stop in the docking bay.

I heard the door open behind me. Rather than abruptly stop my mini-work out, I turned my head as I continued to do pull ups and saw Kasumi standing there.

"Oh my, I'm sorry, didn't mean to interrupt you," she said, apparently blushing.

"You're fine. What's going on?"

"Oh um, we're at the Citadel, and um Shepard needs you to go with him to speak to uh, Councilor Anderson, oh boy. If you want to steal, I mean grab a drink or anything when you're done, let me know," she responded, obviously very flustered. Grinning to myself, I dropped down from the window frame and turned around to face her, realizing I did not have a shirt on.

"Are you blushing?" I curiously asked with that grin on my face.

"Uh no why would I?" she responded, her face growing even more red.

"Yeah ok. And sure, I'll be more than happy to grab a drink with you after I'm done talking to whoever,"

"Ok cool," she said and quickly walked away. So I _did_ still have that effect. I threw my digital camouflage uniform on and found my old boonie hat laying out in the open on the nightstand right next to my bed. I wondered why I did not notice it before. I put it on and felt like I was back to being myself again. Keeping my Ilium experiences fresh on my mind, I concealed two combat knives within my uniform and went back to the bridge. I ran into Shepard, Tali, and Garrus and walked with them off the Normandy and through a doorway into a checkpoint of the Citadel. I got strange looks from some Turians and other humans as we walked into a lift. My guess was that no one had ever seen someone in dressed in the combat uniform I was wearing in years.

While the elevator took us up, I fiddled with an Irish pennant hanging from my uniform. I always had a severe hatred for those things. It bothered me so much that I ended up almost entirely ignoring a conversation that had sparked up between Garrus and Tali.

"So the Quarians are not planning on going to war with the Geth, are they?" Garrus asked.

"I don't know, I don't make those decisions Garrus,"

"Well you are a part of the Admiralty Board now right?"

"Yes, in a way. Not entirely,"

"So what does that mean exactly? You can be a quasi-member of the Admiralty Board?"

"No. It's complicated and you're not the one I would want to explain it to,"

"Aw Tali. You know we're gonna have to get over our differences if we are going to beat the Reapers together,"

"I don't have a problem with you Garrus. You are just too nosy,"

"Ok guys, lets calm it down," Shepard interjected, much to my dismay as I was amused by the exchange. That elevator ride was incredibly long and boring, and I was very excited when we finally reached the end of the transit. The doors then opened and I was stunned by what I saw in front of me: old General Adkins with his signature cigar in mouth and a big smile on his face.

"Blaine Grimm, it's been too long son," he said to me. Thirty-seven years sure took its toll on the guy. That black-haired high-and-tight he always donned to perfection was replaced with gray hair, and the perfectly clean face he used to have was replaced with one riddled with a number of scars.

"General Adkins, I can't believe it's really you," I responded with a salute.

"Don't salute me Grimm, I think we're way past that now," he said with a smile.

"Roger that sir, how did you know I was going to be here?"

"Councilor Anderson gave me the tip that you were going to be here. Boy, do we have some catching up to do. A lot has happened in the past thirty-seven years, as I'm sure you can tell,"

"You should have seen me when I first woke up from cryo," I said, getting a small laugh from him. He then turned to Shepard.

"Commander Shepard, a pleasure. I understand he is going to speak with Anderson and the Council?"

"Yes General. He's really the last thing we have to throw at the Council, unless the Reapers started to attack a Turian colony or the Asari homeworld or something,"

"Understood Commander. Grimm, when you're done running errands we need to chat a bit more. I'll give you a location in a few minutes, so check your omni-tool for it," he said and walked away towards a bridge leading over a stream of water.

"Omni-tool? What the hell is that?" I asked Shepard.

"Oh right, yeah we forgot to get you one of those," he responded, scratching his head.

"It's one of these things," Garrus said, activating an orange hologram around his right arm. "You can use it for just about anything. Weapon repairs, applying medi-gel, if you're a biotic you can use them to upgrade and use your powers more efficiently."

"Where do I get one from?"

"Don't worry about it now. I just sent a message to the General to let him know that you don't have one, so he will let me know where he wants you to meet him later. Lets go meet up with Anderson," Shepard said.

We then proceeded to walk about a half mile or so along the side of the Citadel parallel to the stream of water. While walking along I saw some green creatures working with consoles; they must have been the Keepers that Liara had told me about. I gazed at the artificial sky a few times, wondering how they constructed it. We passed by several armed squads of humans and Turians patrolling the Presidium area as well as a couple of groups of Quarians and Asari. The Quarian groups looked on at us as we passed by, probably because of Tali being with us. We finally reached a doorway that Shepard led us through. After walking up a flight of stairs, we took a sharp right and entered a round patio that overlooked the walkways and stream of the Presidium. Someone dressed up rather formally then approached us.

"Commander, I am glad you are here. Is this Sergeant Grimm?"

"I presume you're councilor Anderson?"

"Yes I am. I've heard a lot about you. I came up in the special forces community myself but your battle with the Reapers has remained completely unheard of until General Adkins caught word of you being alive,"

"So until I was revived, he was the only one left around who knew what happened?"

"There may be another person or two, but they've kept their mouths shut as well. Your Phantom-2 leadership did a superb job in covering up those events, not a single other person on the planet was aware of what had happened. I'm not sure how much your testimony can change the minds of the rest of the Council, but ever since we destroyed the Collector base, there has been all kinds of ominous activity on the edges of the galaxy. Lots of dark energy fluctuations mostly. And no scientist can trace the surge in dark energy to any real origin,"

"You think that could be the Reapers' key to getting back into this galaxy? Using dark energy or creating a wormhole or something?" Shepard asked.

"Possibly. But for now, Grimm, lets go speak to the rest of the council, they're waiting for us. Sorry Shepard but there's too much bad blood between you and them. Especially since you told them where to shove the Spectre reinstatement offer,"

"That's fine Anderson, we'll wait out here," Shepard responded. I then followed Anderson through another doorway and into a hallway. We then walked through a few more sets of doorways before we finally got to a chamber in which Anderson had to utter some key phrase to gain access to. Once inside, I saw the Salarian, Asari, and Turian council members standing behind podiums at the head of the oval-shaped chamber and followed Anderson to the center of it.

"Councilor Anderson, is this Sergeant Blaine Grimm, the one whose classified history report we have in front of us?" the Asari asked.

"Yes it is. He will testify now to his past experiences with the Reapers and answer any questions you may have," Anderson responded.

"Very well. According to this report Sergeant Grimm, you were in cryostasis for thirty-seven years and have only been awake again for a few days. The report also shows that you are a former special forces operative, and that you have been involved in quite a few black operations, assassinations, and things of that nature and very notably found and killed a prominent terrorist leader at the time named Marl Sad Abhani. Now, the black streaks have been removed from the next part of the document and it says you are the lone survivor of humanity's first encounter with an alien species," the Asari said.

"Correct. It was the Reapers, to be more exact,"

"Ah, here we go again with the Reapers," the Turian said.

"Wait a minute you're the guy I've been warned about. You're the guy with your head so far up your ass you can watch yourself digest food. And that no matter what I say you are always going to simply dismiss my claim," I responded with a smart-ass tone of voice.

"Don't be a fool Sergeant Grimm. In other words, don't let Shepard rub off on you. We have already determined these 'Reaper' ships to be Geth creations, nothing more. What you fought on Earth, if that itself is even true, was nothing more than a stray Geth patrol that just happened to wander into your solar system," he responded to me. After all those interrogations I had conducted, and after all those years of being just as efficient at being undercover as I was at combat, I could sense that he was hiding something. He was a split-second hesitant, and I could see his hand "itching" at his leg, likely indicative of some ulterior motives.

"Firstly, Councilor whatever-the-fuck-your-name-is, that battle on Earth did happen. I was there, and I lost some good friends and a lot of fine soldiers. I don't care how prestigious your position is in the galaxy, don't sit there and try to deny that in front of someone who fought and watched his friends die," I sharply responded.

"Sergeant, I suggest you change your tone. You must understand that with the amount of deceit that regularly occurs in the galaxy, we must take every precaution necessary to defend against misinformation," the Asari said to me.

"Then with all due respect, why accept a meeting with me if you're going to dismiss what I say? Why hear or confirm my story if you already prejudged me as a liar? What reason do I have to lie to you?"

"Sergeant, please continue. We will listen," the Salarian said. That argument was obviously not going anywhere.

"Now, to address your idea that what I fought were simply 'Geth' creations, I simply will not agree with that. I've done my homework on the Geth, even met one myself and I can tell you with complete confidence that the Reapers I fought bore no resemblance to them. Not in design, looks, or combat-capabilities,"

"But based on what, Sergeant? You just said yourself you have only met one Geth and have otherwise simply studied them. You have never fought them so how can you tell the difference between them and a so-called Reaper?" the Salarian asked.

"So we are in agreement that I have never fought the Geth?" I asked, receiving only a dumb-founded response from them. The age-old tactic of the use of a red herring never failed to trip someone up, but I never expected it to work that quick, and with the Council of all people. "So now the real question is, what are _you_ hiding?"

"This is preposterous. You - " the Turian started.

"Councilor, what is preposterous is the fact that the Council is still hiding something when the entire Galaxy is in danger and YOU know it. I can see it in all of your eyes. You're all hiding something," I continued, pouring more salt into their open wound.

"Now is the time to say something, I beg of you," Anderson chimed in. The Council still stood there dumbfounded.

"Look, I know that you know the Reapers are real. I fought them. I killed some. They're fully aware of their own vulnerabilities, and know they've been exposed on more than one occasion. I can help stop them. But I can't do it without your backing and the backing of the rest of the galaxy. I didn't know it at the time, but when I killed Marl Sad Abhani, he was indoctrinated. He had a hologram of a Reaper that he hunched over. He also told me that I was simply a mere inconvenience in his plans to continue something that has been going on for a long time,"

"Sergeant Grimm, we have reason to believe the Alliance is with-holding information concerning the Reapers from the rest of the Council. The only evidence we have of them are the events of Saren's attack on the Citadel and Commander Shepard's word, which we can't entirely trust due to his association with Cerberus. We had reports of some dormant, incredibly advanced, unidentified ship from the Batarians, but again there is no solid evidence. We also have your word and record, which we can't entirely take into account considering there is no concrete evidence of what you claim to have happened," the Asari said.

"Maybe I have something that can change your mind," a voice said from the doorway to the chamber. We all looked over and saw General Adkins, with a cigar in mouth, walking in with someone else following him. They continued to walk over, with the tall, unidentified person being cloaked by the shadows behind the General. My curiosity grew exponentially as the phantom inched closer and closer to the light. When he finally walked through and revealed himself, I was in absolute shock.

"THOMPSON?" I sputtered out.

"It's me old buddy," he responded with a hard-fought smile on his face. But something was incredibly wrong. Aside from the aging he experienced all those years, he had obvious machinery protruding from his six-foot-six, two hundred eighty pound frame. It reminded me of those damn Husks and Reaper shock troops. He also took very deep breaths and seemed to struggle to go through with the normal human motions, such as walking and moving his arms.

"What the hell? I thought you were dead? What happened to you?"

"Nice to see you too Grimm," he said while giving a desperate-sounding laugh. His humanly functions had been severely altered, that was for sure. "Long story short, I didn't die. When I exposed myself so you could find their weakness, their troops captured me and pinned me to the ground. They shredded parts of me open, used some kind of toxin to keep me alive while they did it. Replaced some of my organs with some biological material, took the human parts of me away and gathered it up, looked like they were trying to salvage my material fresh. They got about halfway through before you fired that first nuke. You _really_ got their attention then. All but one of them turned away from me to go after you. I couldn't move and I was in more pain than you can imagine, but I could still hear and see. It had glowing eyes, unlike the others, and leaned its face directly over mine. It then told me that it would be back for the rest of me, and that when it was done with you and me, that the rest of the planet was next. It said that they wanted to rid the galaxy of humans before the rest of the galaxies' species were aware of our existence, but wouldn't say why. I told it to screw itself, but before it did that, to finish me off. It simply took one more look at me then walked away,"

"How come I didn't know you were alive?"

"We split the two of you up and debriefed you separately. Our primary concern for Thompson was getting him immediate medical attention. Our primary concern for you was finding out about the battle and looking for any way to use your knowledge. After we determined that you were going to be needed in the future at your best, we decided to put you in cryo. We couldn't do the same for Thompson. His injuries were too severe and we had much to learn from the technology implanted in him," Adkins told me.

"How come nobody, not even I knew about this?" Anderson asked.

"Because it is highly sensitive. Only myself and a small team I personally hand-picked from Phantom-2's science and research division knew about the two. Once I had my team, the rest of Phantom-2 was disbanded and I had all evidence of our unit not in my possession wiped clean. Nobody needed to know about Thompson or Grimm. Not until the time was right,"

"Wait, so how did Liara T'Soni know where to find me and jailbreak me?" I asked.

"We closely monitored Shepard and his battles with Sovereign and the Collectors. Once we knew for sure the Reapers were returning in full force, we purposely slipped Cerberus a message, suggesting they jailbreak you, but we did not feed them your body's whereabouts. We also included in that message to them a fake location of the Shadow Broker. We knew they would turn to Liara to find you, as we monitored their interactions with her before in finding Shepard's body, so we slipped Liara your body's location disguised as a second message from Cerberus. We sent that message after Cerberus asked her to find you. We knew the false information regarding the Shadow Broker's location would not fool Liara, and I trusted you, once woken up, to pick the right side. And look where you ended up," Adkins responded with a slight smile.

"Why go through Cerberus to get me? Or Liara even? You could have just woken me up yourself,"

"Grimm, the galaxy wasn't ready yet to learn of our continued existence or what we had been involved in in the past. And you needed to be exposed to the galaxy and what role humans play in it. You also needed allies, and who better than the ones who followed in your footsteps and defeated the Reapers twice? Better learned through experience than by my words," he responded, puffing the cigar.

"A hell of a gamble," I said.

"One that I had full faith in," he said back to me.

"So what did you guys find out about the Reaper tech in Thompson?" I asked.

"They replaced parts of my nervous system with nodes that seem to sync with their activities, probably to coordinate my actions with the rest of their troops after they finished up with me. I've lost feeling in some parts of my body, but I can feel when the nodes mobilize. The docs said they can't completely control me, however, because they had not messed with any part of my brain and they failed to fully indoctrinate me. When Sovereign became active, I could intercept his transmissions and could tell when he was on the move. Grimm, the nodes have been going insane recently. I can receive transmissions from so many different platforms in my brain, but I can't discern them individually. The signals have been getting stronger with each passing day. Every now and then, a particular one, going by the name of 'Harbinger', enters my thoughts. It attempts to take control of my body, but can't since they didn't finish the job before. At least, that's what the docs say," Thompson said to me. I then turned to the Council.

"Is this enough evidence for you, Council?" I asked.

"It is compelling evidence, but again we do not have a physical Reaper in front of us. We will place our fleets on heightened alert, but there's no need to declare a state of emergency. I believe we can compromise that way," the Asari said. Frustrated with her answer, I refused to drop the dispute.

"And when the Reapers show up?"

"And _IF_ these 'Reapers' show up, we will coordinate all forces in a counterattack,"

"By then it will be too damn late," Shepard said out loud, walking into the chamber.

"Commander, have you been eavesdropping on this hearing?" the Salarian asked him.

"What does it matter? You've made your mind. No evidence is good enough for you. Humanity will be ready for the Reapers, and I highly suggest you change your minds when we aren't around, or else the whole galaxy will pay," Shepard said.

"Every conversation with you is the same. This hearing is over," the Turian said. The alien council members then walked away into a separate room.

"You've got to be kidding me," I muttered as I turned around to Shepard, Tali, and Garrus.

"You put up a good fight with them. If that didn't do it, nothing will," Garrus told me.

"Grimm, maybe you and your teammate Thompson can help convince my people to not go to war with the Geth. While we can't depend on the Salarians, Turians, or Asari to be ready, it would definitely help out a lot if the Migrant Fleet as well as the Geth were ready for the Reapers, instead of fighting each other," Tali said to me.

"We need to talk to Wrex, too. I hear he has pretty much unified the Krogan clans now. They can be a very formidable ally to fight the Reapers with," Garrus said.

"Shepard, what about Thane, Samara, and Zaeed? Are they still going to help us?" I asked.

"I'm sure Samara will come around when the Reapers get here. She's a galactic law enforcer, I'm sure she isn't gonna tolerate mass exterminations. I'm not sure where Zaeed is now, but I do know he is rallying up a number of different mercenary groups. He can probably help swing the Batarians and possibly the Vorcha in favor of our cause too. And Thane is currently handling some issues back on his home world," Shepard said.

"Thompson, you mind going with us to speak to the Quarians?" I asked.

"No problem at all Grimm. The docs said I don't have much time left, especially with nodes rapidly draining my body now. I'll do whatever I can to help prepare for them," he responded to me. General Adkins then motioned to me to follow him over to the entrance to the chamber so we could speak in private.

"I knew bringing you back was important. I hope you don't doubt my decision any more Grimm,"

"Not at all sir,"

"It's all up to you and Shepard now, Grimm. The fate of my decisions, and frankly of the future of humanity and the rest of the galaxy, comes down to what you two and your allies can do against the Reapers,"

"Roger that sir,"

"I'm disbanding what's left of Phantom-2. I need to continue to keep the group enigmatic, so since word is out that it's resurfaced, I need to destroy it before anyone can gather any more intel on it. Last thing we need is the Shadow Broker or Cerberus gaining anything they can use or sell against us,"

"I wouldn't worry about the Shadow Broker, Liara is it now,"

"You're still a bit naïve Grimm. I made Phantom-2, I knew that before you even did. And the Shadow Broker has so many agents, there's going to be a leak here and there. Best we give ourselves a zero possibility to being exposed as opposed to even a miniscule one,"

"Understood. What are you going to do after you disband the rest of Phantom-2?"

"Ahh who knows son. A little fishing here and there, some R and R on some tropical uncharted world maybe. You won't see me again for a while Grimm. Not until it matters most,"

"You sure you don't just want to join up with us? We could use your expertise, especially when the Reapers get here,"

"You killed several of those sons of bitches single-handedly. You took out Abhani, and orchestrated the entire plan to find and kill him by getting violent anti-American militias to side with you and convincing them to fight. You survived being captured by those cannibalistic freaks in South America and escaped, not only with your life, but with the lives of the political hostages they took. Shepard has also done the impossible on more than one occasion. You and Shepard are born leaders and difference-makers. I simply gave you a spot in my organization, and you did the rest. You don't need me, Grimm. I've done everything I can for you,"

"Understood sir,"

"Take care of yourself, Grimm. And take care of your new teammates, they've just been through a mission they all could have easily died on. They're more fragile than you think," he said, that statement hitting me hard. I've always been trained in a harsh, every man for himself environment; that came with being a black operations specialist. I was not entirely used to caring for people I did not know all too well. In my previous life, they tended to be the ones you wanted to stay away from. But this was different. General Adkins was right. They weren't strangers. They were the ones who were going to be by my side when the Reapers showed up.

"And one more thing. Take extra care of Mari'Sal nar Tayya, that Quarian you met on Ilium. There is something special about her,"

"Roger that sir,"

"Take care son. Til next time," he said as he threw his cigar to the ground, smiled, then turned around and walked away from me. While processing the entire conversation, I turned around to see Shepard, Tali, Garrus, Thompson, and Anderson all approaching me.

"Well, Grimm I have some good news for you. The Illusive Man doesn't want to cooperate and hand over some Reaper technology to us, so we're going in to the Collector base," a smiling Shepard said to me.

"That's great news. But I promised Kasumi and Joker I'd get a drink with them first. And I don't like breaking promises," I responded, thinking about what General Adkins had said to me.

"We're not heading there until tomorrow at the earliest," Shepard responded.

"Good. Now direct me to the bar they went to. And you all can come along too, I guess, if you want,"


	8. Chapter 8: Infiltration

_**Ch. 8: Infiltration**_

Shepard, Garrus, and I ended up having a shot competition at the bar where we met Joker and Kasumi. Joker just stuck with a few beers and did not join us since he had to pilot the Normandy and all. I went out first, thanks to still being a lightweight from being in cryo for so long. Shepard and Garrus went blow for blow for a little while, but Garrus ended up edging him out. That surprised me, as I heard that Shepard drank some pretty volatile stuff in the past without too much damage to his system. Thompson, Kasumi, and Joker got some good laughs at our expense while Tali shook her head and said 'Keelah' a few times. She did end up laughing a bit though. Kasumi had to help me back to the Normandy while Tali helped Shepard back. Garrus refused any help.

When we got back on the Normandy, Tali took Shepard up to the Captain's quarters then came back down and went with me and Kasumi down to the lounge in the Crew's quarters. Thompson and Garrus stayed in the Combat Information Center. When we got to the lounge, I noticed Legion and Grunt talking to some projection that looked like a holographic blue orb near the right row of stasis pods. Out of drunk curiosity, I walked over to them.

"What is that?" I grumbled as Kasumi helped me stumble over there.

"Grimm, Blaine that is EDI, the ship's A.I.," Legion responded to me. Unable to think clearly, he merely confused me.

"A what?" I responded.

"A.I. Artificial Intelligence platform,"

"So what is EDI?"

"Sergeant Blaine Grimm, I am EDI. We haven't met yet," the orb said to me. I was a bit shocked at the time to be spoken to by a hologram.

"Yeah, so you do what exactly?"

"I operate and maintain the Normandy's electronic warfare defense system,"

"Isn't this ship of Cerberus design? So those shit-bags designed you?"

"Correct,"

"So Cerberus still has tabs on this whole operation?"

"Incorrect. My coding has been altered and I have an effective block on sending any transmissions to Cerberus command. I no longer follow Cerberus protocol," she responded to me. I looked around to Tali, Legion, and Grunt looking for clarification.

"Yes, she is right Grimm. Legion and I went into her systems and changed them. She no longer has any connections with Cerberus," Tali told me.

"You and Legion?"

"Yes,"

"Quarian and Geth?" I reiterated.

"Yes. It took a little while, but I made peace with working by his side,"

"I thought your two species had all kinds of problems,"

"Yes. I know that must be confusing for you, but Legion and his faction of Geth pose no threat to us. They want to stop the Reapers, just like we do. And they might be able to help us negotiate peace with the rest of his kind,"

"Well, we should bring him along then when we go to convince your people to not go to war with them,"

"We'll see, Grimm. I don't know how good of an idea that is though," she responded to me. I just nodded back to her and had Kasumi help me walk over to the table. A couple of other crew members who I had not met yet left the table and went to their quarters. Mess Sergeant Rupert left as well. Tali and Kasumi then both came over and sat at the table with me while Legion and Grunt both stayed standing.

"So Grimm, can you tell us a little more about you?" Tali asked.

"What do you want to know?"

"Anything. You don't seem like you know fear, is it because you already fought the Reapers?" Tali asked, to which I initially responded with a slight laugh then went on to answer her.

"Well, Legion already told you my first career stop in the military was as a Navy SEAL. That was one of the harshest training regimens I had ever been through. Are they even still around?"

"No, they were combined with the rest of the Earth's special forces when the Alliance formed. Each special operations unit contributed to the formation of a new Alliance special forces division and integrated," Kasumi responded. I felt a bit betrayed.

"Well damn. The SEALs have a long, rich history. I wasn't around for it obviously, but the first enemy they faced were the Vietcong in the Vietnam War back in the 1960's. The Vietcong were fearless, ready-to-die masters of unconventional warfare and guerilla attacks," I continued, Tali looking pretty hard at me. "They weren't afraid of our Marines or Army combat units. They regularly ambushed them and dealt heavy casualties. They operated freely, caused terror and wreaked havoc on our military. Nothing scared them. That's when the SEALs, just officially formed, were called upon to do war with the Vietcong. When my predecessors entered the war zone, they began engaging a very confident enemy in its own backyard. They would infiltrate, capture key personnel, kill their leaders, destroy their supplies, recover intel, rescue hostages and POWs, conduct psychological warfare, train rebel forces, and ambush the Vietcong's own guerilla squads. They disrupted the VC's ability to operate freely. They became legitimately afraid of the SEALs and called them the Devils With Green Faces. They couldn't do anything without the fear of being attacked,"

"That's pretty crazy. They gave a fearless enemy a dose of their own medicine," Kasumi remarked.

"Again, you know I wasn't around back then, but the key thing to take away from that little bit is the fact that my unit ultimately became feared all around the Earth. When I joined the Navy SEALs, it was no different. We could be outnumbered a thousand to one, but we would still make our enemies fear us and respect our combat capabilities. My first CO, Captain Harps, told me when I became one that the difference between us and the rest of the world was that we stayed true to our roots. The fact that we were able to make groups as vicious as the Vietcong, the cannibalistic terrorists who nearly took over South America, and Marl Sad Abhani's forces afraid of us is a testament to his words,"

"I see, that all makes sense. So what's your plan for dealing with the Reapers?" Tali asked.

"No plan really. The idea I'm going to stick with against them is the old SEAL mantra of causing fear. I don't know if they can truly experience emotions like fear, but I'm going to give my damn best effort to give them that wonderful opportunity. When I killed that first Reaper back on Earth, the others began acting differently. They abandoned their conservative means of finding and capturing me to aggressively trying to kill me at any cost. Instead of only letting their shock troops try to find me in the jungles, they began setting everything ablaze with their primary cannons. They became more frantic and erratic, almost desperate I would say, after I killed the second one. I'm guessing they can at least get frustrated, and that's good enough for me. A frustrated enemy is a sloppy one,"

"It's good to have someone with such confidence on board. I just hope you don't overlook your own limits," Tali responded.

"I hope I don't either," I said back. "This is ultimately your guys' operation, I'm just here to help,"

"Grimm, Blaine we highly recommended to Shepard Commander, Creator Tali Zorah and Lawson Miranda to take your combat advice against the Old Machines. You are the only one who has fought them in full capacity on the ground, and your advice has a much higher statistical likelihood of being successful against the Old Machines than that of anyone else," Legion told me.

"Well, that's ultimately up to them," I responded, feeling a headache start to come along. I realized at that point that I still had not responded to Mari's message. "I'm going to take care of something real quick then get back to you guys,"

"You think you can walk by yourself?" Kasumi asked.

"Yes, thanks for asking," I said as I attempted to stand up, only to trip over my foot a few strides into my walk. Kasumi and Tali both laughed at me, to which I could only respond with a smile and a middle finger. Those alien alcoholic drinks were something else. Kasumi came over and helped me stand up and walked me to a console in the Crew's Quarters where I looked up my messages and found the one from Mari. I then responded:

_Mari, I apologize for taking so long to respond to you, I've just had a lot of running around to do. No need to thank me for helping you out on Ilium. If you EVER find yourself in a distasteful __situation and needing some help, or even if you just need someone to talk to or spend some time with, I'm here. I hope all goes well with your Pilgrimage, and I will be paying a visit to the Flotilla some time soon, so if we don't run into each other again before then, hopefully we can catch up. Anyways, write me whenever you get a chance again. Blaine._

After I got done sending the message, I worked my way to my room and crashed. I must have been out for a good five or six hours until I opened my eyes to see one of those Reaper shock troops standing over me. Before I could react, it grabbed me by the neck and slammed me against the wall, then threw me to the ground. Shocked, I jumped back to my feet and threw a punch at it, only for my fist to run right into some kind of barrier surrounding it. This one had glowing yellow eyes and some kind of flame running throughout its body. It was levitating in the air, staring directly at me.

"Blaine Grimm, we knew you would be back," it said to me.

"Why don't you drop that barrier? Fight like a man for once," I responded.

"A necessary precaution to allow this exchange to occur. We told you that your kind would face our wrath. Your destruction is imminent, Blaine Grimm,"

"You know, I've heard that a few times now. I'm still waiting,"

"You are an unusual specimen. Your willpower is unmatched by anything else in the galaxy. Unfortunately for you, it has not saved you, but only delayed your demise. Your value goes beyond that of your destruction. We have an offer for you to reprieve yourself and for us to spare a few of your choosing, however, seeing as Shepard's resolve can not be broken,"

"Well if you know me half as well as you think you do, you know that I have no history of negotiating with your type. So tough luck, piece of shit. I will break you, just like I broke your friends on Earth, and just like Commander Shepard killed Sovereign,"

"We will wipe the stain of your species clean from the universe. You do not see that our methods are a species' salvation through destruction. You soon will,"

"Tough words from a machine,"

"We are the Harbinger of your destiny. We will meet again soon Blaine Grimm. This exchange is over," it said to me then vanished right in front of my eyes. I walked over to where it just was, examining my surroundings for any evidence it may have left behind, but came up empty-handed. Commander Shepard then entered my room.

"Are you okay? We heard a bunch of noise in here," he asked me.

"I'm fine. Just a hallucination,"

"Hallucinations? I have just the thing to make those and your dreams go away," Mordin then said to me as he popped his head in the door. He then walked away and returned a couple of minutes later with some vial of blue liquid. "Sergeant Grimm, here, drink this. Will cure all of your post-cryo problems,"

"Thanks Mordin. How long have you had this?"

"Finished making it an hour ago,"

"And you're sure it's going to work?"

"Chances of it not working are incredibly small compared to the chances of it working,"

"Fair enough," I responded and downed the vial. It actually tasted good, like some kind of blueberry-flavored juice. I looked at Shepard and Mordin then handed the vial back to him.

"So what's the plan Shepard? Are we still hitting that Collector base?" I asked.

"Yes we are. We're hitting the Omega-4 Relay in about eight hours. Everyone here has already been there, but it's just going to be me, you, Legion, and Tali going in. We're going to work as two separate two-person teams, it's going to be you and Legion and me and Tali,"

"I have nothing against Legion, but I'm just curious about why it absolutely has to be him teamed up with me,"

"Him and Tali are tech experts unmatched in electronics and hacking. I'm sure Cerberus has all kinds of new defenses and security systems up, so we're going to need them to break in,"

"Roger that. What kind of resistance can we expect?"

"Cerberus mercs for sure, I'm not sure what else. Unfortunately they've had their hands on Collector and Reaper technology for a little while now, so I'm just hoping they haven't done any crazy experimentation with it on any organics,"

"And if they have?"

"Then things are going to be a little more complicated than I thought they would be," he responded. We spent the next two hours examining a detailed schematic of the base that EDI brought up and we came up with our battle plans. Legion and I would infiltrate from the very bottom of the base, while Shepard and Tali would go in through a small entrance several floors above us. That way, if either duo ran into heavy resistance or needed help, we would not be too awfully far away from each other. The plan was for Shepard and Tali to reach what originally was the Collector General's control room and gather some kind of Reaper technology while Legion and I were to reach the downed human Reaper and extract something from it. EDI proved herself to be the perfect recon machine, and showed me plenty of pictures and video footage of the inner structure of the base. Needless to say, I was shocked when I saw all of the pods containing deceased humans. It takes a lot to disturb me, but EDI's revelation of the Collectors turning these humans into organic paste and feeding it into an under-construction humanoid Reaper made me a bit sick. It also left me wondering why Shepard decided to preserve the Collector Base at all. I knew from the past, however, that the most valuable thing a less-sophisticated enemy could get his hands on was enemy technology or weaponry. Phantom-2 was incredibly intent on never letting that happen, so much that if any of their operatives in the field died, they would send a radio signal that activated a "melt-down" protocol in a microchip in their combat uniform that disintegrated the body and everything within five feet of it. So a base filled with enemy technology and weaponry was an absolute gold mine to use against the Reapers, I just did not think that Shepard left it in the right hands.

After we figured out our exact plans, I went to talk to Jacob. He told me the previous day that he could possibly get his hands on the same Ghost-3 combat exoskeleton that Phantom-2 used when we fought the Reapers. Sure enough, he came through thanks to some of his old Corsairs contacts and was able to provide me with one. I missed that thing of beauty so much. It was a black exoskeleton that was weaved with a fabric made of a flexible isomer of some incredibly strong-bonded man-made element. It would harden on a sudden impact, such as a big fall or a bullet striking it, and protect the body while absorbing most of the shock. It would also react to the body's chemical responses, and would intravenously administer some solution that boosted the strength and speed of the wearer and temporarily reduced any pain experienced. I put the exoskeleton on, then wore my digital camouflage over it and put on my combat boots and steel-knuckled combat gloves that Jacob was able to recover for me. Jacob then gave me a more modern LBV and equipped me with twenty thermal clips and four fusion grenades. I walked over to the weapons he had laying out on some tables and grabbed some crazy-looking rifle he called the "Revenant" and slung it on my back. I then picked up an M-5 Phalanx pistol and played with the blue dot beam a few times before I holstered it on my leg. Jacob recommended to me to grab a sniper rifle and a shotgun as well, but I declined the offer. Instead, I just retrieved my combat blade from my quarters, attached it to my side, and grabbed three more smaller blades and concealed them under my jacket. You never knew when those would come in handy.

I then went to the AI Core to have a chat with Legion. I learned more about him and his fascination with myself and Shepard, and he also discussed with me what would be necessary for Quarian and Geth peace. He explained to me that the Quarians attacked the Geth when they deemed them vulnerable one hundred per cent of the time, which made me actually understand their reluctance to enter peace talks. I told him how important it was to orchestrate peace between their races, which he told me is the same consensus that had been reached by the different platforms within his system. He agreed that if given the chance, he would come with me, Tali, Shepard, and Thompson to negotiate peace and promote a new-found unity between the Quarians and his people. After a good amount of discussion in regards to that, we discussed our battle plans and we discussed combat tactics with each other and how we should operate together as a two-man team, seeing as I had not been in combat with anyone on the Normandy up until then. He was a fast learner, and understood my lesson in hand signals quicker than anyone else I ever taught. We saw each other eye-to-eye, so to speak, and went up to the CIC to meet up with Tali and Shepard. Thompson grinned when he saw me and commented on how the way I looked reminded him of the badass he used to be. I reminded him he still was a badass, just not as much as I still was. He laughed as I walked to the cockpit with Tali to observe our approach to the Omega-4 Relay while Shepard talked to Legion. I looked out the porthole, gazing at the massive construct with the star-filled background. I finally relaxed my body as I stared into space.

"Are you okay, Grimm?" Tali asked me.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just appreciating the small things,"

"What do you mean?"

"What we're doing right now, traveling among the stars, this was my imagination not too long ago. Something I could only experience through films and thought. Sure, we could travel around the solar system back then. I trained on one of Jupiter's moons, even. But faster than light travel, interacting with other sentient races, man," I said back, putting my hands in my pockets while continuing to look out at the stars. Tali simply put her hand on my shoulder and looked at me. In that incredibly brief split-second, I could see past the purple haze within her helmet and make out the outlines of her head and face. I could even see two marks on both of her cheeks. I still could not tell exactly what she looked like, but I could see what appeared to be a smile on her lips and the squinting motions someone's eyes make when they have tears.

"You okay Tali?"

"Yes. When I first met you on Ilium, I could tell there was something special about you. You have an undeniable willpower and almost some sort of aura around you. I could tell from your first encounter with a Quarian, with Mari' Sal nar Tayya, the way you treated her and defended her. I feel like you may finally be the one who is able to help my people, to help save us. Our resources are dwindling, we can't sustain as a Flotilla much longer,"

"Hey I don't mean to interrupt you guys, but we're about to hit the relay. Just don't want you freaking out when you see a bunch of crazy stuff out the window, Sergeant," Joker said to me.

"Thanks, but I'll be fine Joker. And Tali I am going to do everything in my power to help your people out. I've had the chance to do something similar in the past, but I didn't. An entire culture, gone, all because I was following fucking orders. It still haunts me 'til this day. I wish I could go back to save those people, to change their future. Maybe I can redeem myself this time. I am not going to sit back and let something like that happen again, I promise you that," I said, dropping my head and getting briefly emotional while recalling the very first mission I was a part of as a SEAL operator in Algeria.

"I know you won't," Tali said as she rubbed my shoulder a little bit then let go. As she said that, Joker took us through the relay. I looked back up and was mesmerized by watching the hyperactive particles wiz by us as we propelled to faster-than-light speeds. Within a few seconds, we were on the other side of the relay, surrounded by all kinds of debris and confronted with the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Nothing could ever have prepared me to see that in person. I was simultaneously marveled and astonished as we began our approach to the perimeter around the Collector Base. The strange construct floated in front of us.

Tali and I went back to Shepard and Legion. We then skimmed over the plan one more time and did some equipment checks. Miranda handed me and Shepard small rebreathers to cover our faces, seeing as the Collector Base was completely open to the vacuum of space. Tali already had that covered and Legion clearly did not need anything to help him breathe. We could see several Cerberus ships floating around the base, but our stealth systems were engaged so they did not take notice of us. Everyone else stayed calm and collect as we began our approach to the bottom of the floating base.

"Bring us in, Joker," Shepard said. Joker then flew a U-shaped path to get the decontamination chamber lined up with the level of the base that Shepard and Tali would enter. Once he stabilized the ship, he cycled the chamber and Shepard and Tali jumped onto the station. Shepard radioed in to me to make sure our communications worked. I put on my boonie hat in preparation for the mission, then checked the dock on my Ghost-3 exoskeleton and made sure my shields were up. I was certain I was good to go, so Legion and I entered the chamber as Joker got us in position to infiltrate the bottom of the base. Once he stabilized the ship, he cycled the chamber again and Legion and I quickly jumped from the ship and landed on a small pad on the bottom of the base.

"Shepard, Legion and I are on deck. Ready to start our search," I radioed in.

"The human Reaper should be somewhere on the bottom, according to EDI. Work your way up a level or two and Legion should know what to do as soon as you find it," he responded.

"Roger that," I said and began advancing into the base with Legion. I had the Revenant out at the ready as we began making our way into the small, bottom floor. We almost immediately ran into a doorway, which Legion determined he had to hack in order for us to get through. I could still look outside while he went to work, so I observed the black hole some more. Aside from the incredible scenery, I was actually ecstatic to be back on a real combat mission. The near-death operation against the Reapers did not deter my hunger for combat; it only fed it more. Bad news for them when they decided to arrive.

Legion finished up with the door and we entered the base. I looked up and could see we were in some strange, enormous chamber. Hanging some distance above us was an incredibly huge machine; it must have been that human Reaper. We were still too far away to tell for sure, but I was pretty confident in what I saw.

"Shepard, Legion and I have eyes on the Reaper. It has got to be at least fifteen to twenty stories above us though, there's no way we're getting to it without going into Cerberus' main area of operations," I quietly radioed in to him, observing some drones flying back and forth between the Reaper and the main platform adjacent to it.

"Okay, me and Tali have gone a few more levels up already, we're closing in on the Collector General's control room. EDI is transmitting the location to you now of where we entered the base. Go there and wait for us," he responded.

"On the way," I said and motioned to Legion for us to continue moving.

"Grimm, Blaine. We have detected an anomaly in our projected path to where Shepard Commander would like us to go," Legion said to me.

"What do you mean?"

"Electrical fluctuations are not consistent with a structural distribution. There are random spikes in the electrical field of the base. These spikes are mobile and highly concentrated,"

"Wouldn't something like that happen because of the sentry drones?"

"No. They possess individual power resources. These spikes are directly linked to the structure itself,"

"So what are you suggesting?"

"We do not have sufficient information. We will work to reach a consensus while we continue our mission," he said to me. Confused, I nodded to him and we began moving towards the location that Shepard gave us. We reached a pitch-black corridor that a small flight of stairs led to. I attempted to activate my night vision lenses, but the cryogenic sleep must have ruined something in the system so I could not activate it. A bit frustrated by this, I took point and slowly walked down the steps. Upon reaching the last step, I lowered my right foot down only to step onto something soft and oozing with fluid. The corridor smelled absolutely putrid, I could recognize the disgusting scent but could not figure out a culprit for why it was there just yet. Unfazed, I continued to move forward into the strange, unidentified muck with Legion following close behind me. The stuff never got higher than the top of my boots, thankfully, so I did not have to feel any of it with my skin as we moved through the hallway. We eventually reached the other end, where there was just enough light peering in from the next area of the base for me to take a look at what we just walked through. I was sickened by what I saw: a series of dead, rotting human corpses covered by some dark, reddish paste scattered about the incredibly wide corridor. There were hundreds of pods lining the walls of the corridor all the way up to the ceiling, some filled with mutilated corpses and some with that same dark, red paste. The Collectors apparently spared no one when they did the Reapers' work; there were bodies of women and children among the dead as well.

"Grimm, Blaine we are approaching an energy spike. We still have not reached a consensus as to what exactly it is," Legion told me, apparently oblivious to the atrocity before us.

"Do you not see this shit, Legion?" I asked, a bit frustrated with his antics.

"Unused specimens from the Reaper project. Disposed of in an unused area of the base," he responded. I shook my head and motioned for him to continue moving into the next area of the base with me. We walked in to some kind of arena with multiple pillars and computer terminals scattered around it. The walls and ceiling were made of that same organic-looking material the Collectors used to design the rest of the base, but there were no pods in that area. I saw some movement in the center of the arena and gave the hand signal to halt and take cover. Legion and I jumped behind a small barrier near the entrance and peered over the top of it to see what was going on.

There were some Cerberus scientists walking around some large pod in the center of the chamber carrying datapads and some strange fluids in vials to it. I could not see what was inside of the pod thanks to our bad angle, so Legion and I started moving from cover to cover around the arena until we could get an actual glimpse of what was inside it. Once I got a view, I realized it was some kind of terrible hybrid between man and machine. It stood probably about nine feet tall and looked like a human with all kinds of robotic implants protruding from its body. It reminded me a bit of Thompson, but this guy was much farther along in his transformation than him. I gave Legion the hand signal to hold position, and I got to doing what I do best and began sneaking through the shadows. I worked my way around the perimeter of the arena until I found one of the scientists isolated and unseen by his peers. I slung the Revenant back over my shoulder, getting ready to strike. I quickly snatched him, covered his mouth, and dragged him into the shadows behind a large computer terminal.

"Listen carefully. You have one chance to tell me what that is and what you sickos are doing down here. When I remove my hand from your mouth, if you make a noise any louder than the buzz of a fly, you and everyone else down here is going to die. Now talk," I sternly said to him, removing my hand from his mouth.

"That there is going to save humanity from the Reapers and from everyone else," he said to me.

"Who is everyone else?"

"The rest of council space. They can't be trusted. The Council has always despised humans, even after the Alliance saved their asses from Sovereign. That there is one sacrificial human who will go a long way to helping us learn more about the Reapers and how to defend ourselves from them,"

"You are out of your damn mind. You're implanting Reaper technology in humans?"

"Of course. It makes us stronger and nearly invincible. He was a weak person, seeking any kind of help. We turned him into this, an indestructible fighting machine,"

"That there is an abomination. Is he even aware of what you all did to him?"

"He's fully conscious, he may have some kind of idea as to what is going on, but we've kept him drugged up around the clock ever since we started with him,"

"How many more are there?"

"I'm not saying anything else to you," he responded, to which I pulled my pistol out and aimed it point-blank at his head.

"Last chance," I said, pressing the barrel of the M-5 into his head hard enough to draw a little bit of blood.

"Kill me if you want. Our work will keep going on, we must save the human race," he said with a strange smile on his face. That smile was very familiar, much like the one Marl Sad Abhani gave me while he was indoctrinated.

"Wait a minute, you're indoctrinated," I said as some bright, stadium-like lights lit up and revealed us. Legion was able to stay hidden behind his cover, but a large squad of Cerberus mercenaries had their weapons pointed at me and the scientist. I stood up directly behind him with the pistol still pointed directly at his head.

"Sergeant Blaine Grimm. We knew you were on this station ever since you hacked into the doorway on the bottom floor. You're not as subtle as you think," the lead mercenary yelled out at me from about twenty meters away.

"Shepard, come in. I've been compromised," I very quietly radioed in.

"Oh and don't bother trying to use your radio. No signals get in or out of this room. Tell us the location of the people you are with, and the Illusive Man said we will spare you," he said to me. I started brainstorming, thinking of every possible scenario, who to shoot first, where to run and how fast to move, all of that good stuff. I looked over at Legion and saw he had plans of his own. He adjusted something on his Widow sniper rifle, and did something with his omni-tool. He then lifted up from cover and aimed his rifle directly at the leader of the mercenary group. I quickly choked the scientist I had hostage out at the exact moment Legion fired a shot that blew the lead mercenary into a bloody mess. I then dove behind cover, holstered my M-5 and pulled the Revenant out, ready to do battle.


	9. Chapter 9: POWs

_**Ch. 9: POWs**_

Even the very first time I played a game of football, I had an insatiable lust for punishing the opposing quarterback and anyone from the other team who dared to try to move the ball against me. Week in and week out, I built a reputation by overpowering and being too fast for the linemen assigned to block me and by consistently wreaking havoc in the backfield, garnering a total of thirty-four solo sacks and over sixty tackles for loss in one season alone. On the other side of the ball, I made sure I punished any defenders who attempted to stop me any time I rushed with the ball. I injured defenders on an every-game basis and single-handedly wore down entire defenses until I could simply have my way with them. They told me there was never anyone before me with my size, speed, and endurance to step foot on the field. I could never really give any reporter a good explanation for why I was that way. The only thing I could say was that I loved training. I wanted to be the best, so I pushed myself to my limits and past them around the clock on an almost-daily basis. That was my official answer. The truth was I always had a hunger for combat, and the full-contact, injury-riddled sport of football was my answer to this desire in my early days.

That same inner hunger followed me when I became a soldier. From my very first combat operation in Algeria to the predicament I was in at the time on the Collector base, I hungered for the opportunity to make the enemies of my country and the general wrongdoers pay for their actions. Just like in football, I made a reputation for myself among the special forces community by succeeding in things that others deemed impossible. Pinned down, surrounded by about two hundred rebel troops and being hunted by helicopters and armored vehicles in Algeria, our lieutenant was seriously wounded by a mortar shell, leaving me to lead the squad. My six-man squad and I tactically engaged and evaded the enemy while moving our immobilized officer with us. We made half of the enemy force casualties of war, while we suffered a non-venomous snakebite to one of our guys. To the enemy's credit, their gunfire forced him to take cover next to the small pit where the snake was hiding. I was never scared or overconfident, but I truthfully took some pleasure out of annihilating my opponent in a tactical life or death version of chess.

The situation before me was only a bit different. I had an incredibly efficient teammate taking cover about ten meters away from me after delivering a shot from his ridiculously high-powered sniper rifle. The scientists dispersed, escaping the arena and likely alerting more guards. Before I ducked down, I counted sixteen more mercs not including the one just blown to bits, none of whom were probably going to take the gruesome death of their leader that well. Legion was smart in his target analysis; taking out the leader of even a small squad would always cause a sequence of confusion as his or her replacement would step up to start giving new commands. Instead of allowing them the chance to regroup and reorganize, I popped up from my cover, instinctively lining up my sights with their heads. I knew how their shields worked. They operated in an oscillatory mechanism, so the shield would deflect a bullet, then for a fraction of a second it would lose its intensity as the shield strength at that exact spot would hit a minimum before returning to its maximum strength. I pulled the trigger a total of seven times, each pull initiating a two-round burst into each head I targeted, the second always penetrating the weakened shield while it was at its minimum at the respective spot and delivering the killer blow. I then took cover, hearing the thuds of lifeless bodies falling to the ground and the firing of automatic weapons at my position. I looked over at Legion, who did not need any orders as he already sprang up and used my distraction to release another deadly round from his rifle. I heard the gruesome sound of another human body being splattered from the impact.

At that point, the enemy gunfire was going crazy. The Cerberus squad was down to less than half of its force and short of its most senior members in a matter of about twenty seconds. They were desperately trying to keep me and Legion pinned down so that we did not have a chance to return fire. I looked over at Legion, who activated his omni-tool again. Puzzled, I watched him hit some buttons then stand up from cover and wave it at the mercs in one short, fluid motion. The gunfire stopped and the mercs started cursing, as I realized that Legion must have jammed their weapons somehow. I stood up from the cover and laid down some more fire, downing five more confused mercs and leaving two standing. Legion then sprang up and walked with me over to the two, both of whom were covered in gore from their former teammates and had laid down their malfunctioning weapons and put their hands in the air.

"Both of you, on your knees, now!" I demanded, pointing my Revenant directly at the first one's head. They both complied and dropped to their knees, putting their hands behind their heads. "What is Cerberus experimenting with here?"

"We don't know, we were just hired to provide security," the one directly in front of me said.

"I'm sure you know a little something about this. What did they do to this guy?" I said, pointing at the pod a few meters away.

"We're just security, that's it. I swear I don't know what's going on here," he said back to me. He actually sounded sincere, I could tell. What was strange was that his partner was just sitting there with his head down, not saying anything or insisting on his innocence as well.

"You know something though, don't you," I said, shifting my focus to the one in question. He hesitated, but decided to answer my question.

"Only where he came from. The Illusive Man offered me and my squad a lot of credits to capture a number of people from different colonies. People who wouldn't be missed and whose absence would be overlooked," he responded, much to my disgust.

"Legion watch them," I said and walked over to the deformed test subject. He was alive and breathing, but seemed very unaware of his surroundings, much less me walking up to him. "Can you hear me?" I asked, only to receive some rapid, short exhales of terrified breath in response. I took a closer look at him, observing the strange, glowing mechanical parts going in and out all over his body and the random gashes and stitches present all over him. The Cerberus scientists obviously experimented on just about every part of his body, probably trying to determine where the Reaper technology would fit in just right. I then heard a faint whisper come from the tormented guy.

"Kill... me..." he muttered out. I wanted to make absolute sure I heard him right.

"What did you say?" I asked him as I leaned in closer to hear his words.

"No more... suffering. The voices... all I hear are... are voices,"

"What voices?"

"Voices... the voices. Evil. Harbinger. Death... death is coming..."

"You've got to help me out here, be more specific," I said. Right as I said that, the lights dimmed and an alarm sounded. The scientists that escaped the short firefight must have alerted the rest of the base. Legion and I had to link back up with Shepard and Tali and get the hell off this base.

"Kill me! Stop this! Please!" he managed to gasp out. I took one more look at the guy, seeing the obviously tormented state he was in. I could see tears start to drip from the lids around the cybernetic eyes they implanted him with. Of all my combat experience, this was the one thing I had not encountered at that point: the choice of ending someone else's life or letting them live a tortured existence. I always told myself that I do not end someone's life unless they are directly threatening mine or the lives of others. But this was different. I figured we could exfiltrate the base and probably convince Shepard to come back later to liberate the test subjects, but they would still be subjected to living a tortured existence. I decided the right thing to do was to end his misery. I walked back around in front of his pod. He then pleaded with me again to kill him. I pulled the M-5 from my holster and took aim at his head. He managed to crack a trembling, desperate smile across his face as he closed his eyes, preparing for the inevitable. I looked away and pulled the trigger, then jogged back over to Legion, who still had his weapon trained on the Cerberus mercs.

"Grimm, Blaine. What do you want to do with the mercenaries?" Legion asked me. I answered him by walking up to them and punching both unconscious. He simply nodded his flashlight head at me then began following me as I led us out of the arena. I had the Revenant back out at the ready, prepared for any more mercenary squads we may run into. We jogged to the other side of the arena and slipped through a small doorway. Once through, we ended up in another wide-open area being patrolled by more mercs. I spotted a spiral staircase at the top of a wide ramp to our left, but there were two more sentries guarding it. Legion and I ducked behind a short wall and I decided to try to contact Shepard again.

"Shepard, come in,"

"You're loud and clear Grimm. What the hell happened with you two?"

"We ran into one of their sick experiments and got ambushed. We're fine and making our way up to the rendezvous point,"

"Tali is salvaging a computer terminal right now. We'll be on our way in a minute,"

"Roger that. Make it quick though, Shepard. The guards are on alert and searching for us," I said. I could hear Tali tell Shepard she had what they needed, then Shepard told me they were on their way. I responded with a trademark "roger that" and gave the hand signal to Legion to take the one on the left. I threw a fusion grenade out at the group of mercs in the center of the open area and quickly swung around the side of the cover. I heard a puzzled "huh" come from their direction and put three rounds directly at the sentry on the right side of the spiral staircase. I downed him while Legion took out the one on the left. At the same time, the grenade exploded, turning the four-man group into ice statues. Legion and I then quickly stampeded up the ramp and I took point as we began making our way up the staircase. At the top was another unsuspecting guard facing the other direction. I tucked the Revenant away and grabbed the merc by the neck, choked him out and kicked his unresponsive body down the staircase, forcing Legion to jump to the side to avoid being knocked over. I quietly told him "sorry" and we moved onto the next level.

It was a very dark hallway with a bunch of computer terminals lining the right wall. The blue glow from their holographic screens cast directly onto us and served as the only source of light in the area. I looked over to the left side of the hallway and noticed several large piles on the ground. Upon further inspection I could tell they were heaps of corpses. But this time, it wasn't just human corpses. There were dead Batarians, Turians, and even a Quarian among the human ones. The Quarian corpse had a mask puncture and blood splattered all over it, so I could not see a face. We jogged over to the computer terminals and saw diagrams of the different species on the screens, all being compared to human ones. Not thinking too much into it at the time, Legion and I kept moving towards the other end of the hallway. I made a tactical error in ignoring the fact that there was only one sentry posted for such a large, obviously important area. There was no way he was designated to keep guard there by himself. I became too distracted by the computer terminals and heaps of bodies to realize that we were being tracked from above by cameras the whole time. Luckily, I caught wind of it at the last second, grabbed Legion, and threw both of us to the ground.

The door on the other end of the hallway opened, and a heavily armed group of mercenaries on the other side of it were waiting for us and had set up a VI-controlled minigun that unleashed a devastating burst of rounds directly above our prone bodies. We quickly rolled away from each other and fired on the automatic weapon, disabling it. We then both jumped to our feet and dodged incoming bursts of fire from the mercenaries. Legion then dove behind a pile of bodies while I took cover behind one of the terminals. I peeked around the right side of it to determine the size of the enemy force and made them out to be eight strong. Thing was, six of them had heavy machine guns and two of them had missile launchers. One of them fired a missile at me while the rest of the group laid down suppressive fire on my position. The explosion knocked me on my back, briefly exposing me to the gunfire. I took two shots to my left arm, but my shield deflected the damage. I scrambled back to cover, knowing I had to take out the missile launcher-toting mercs first.

As I propped myself back up behind the damaged terminal, Legion had already fired his Widow and annihilated the merc that fired her missile at me. This group was a bit smarter than the last though, and laid down suppressive fire on both of our positions rather than focusing on just one of us. I looked around the corner and could see two of them moving quietly around the wall, attempting to get to a position where they could flank me. I set the Revenant down and pulled out one of my combat blades as the two continued to move around the wall. Once the first one got exactly where I wanted them to be, I threw it right into their ankle. The blow forced him to fall backwards and knock his buddy over. I then picked the Revenant back up and quickly killed both of them with two surgical bursts from the powerful rifle.

Another rocket sailed towards me and blew apart the pillar where the computer terminal was attached to. My cover was gone, so I scrambled to my feet and used my agility to dodge the incoming fire and take cover behind the next terminal. I heard the unmistakable sound of the Widow and looked over to see that Legion had eliminated the other merc with a missile launcher. I took the opportunity to lean around the cover and hold the trigger, unleashing a devastating spray of armor piercing projectiles. I unloaded the rest of that thermal clip into the group and watched as their shields and armor were stripped away. The remaining projectiles ripped through their flesh and forced their lifeless bodies to the ground. I hit the release trigger on the Revenant, grabbed a fresh thermal clip from one of the pockets on my LBV and popped it in. The clicking sound assured me the gun was ready to go again. Me and Legion jogged over to the doorway and linked back up together there. I patted him on the shoulder.

"Grimm, Blaine is that a show of hostility?"

"Me patting you on the shoulder? Not at all, just letting you know you kicked ass,"

"Acknowledged," he said. We then cautiously slipped through the doorway, fully aware of the ambush we just dealt with. The next area appeared to be some kind of laboratory room, full of tons of vials, computers, and other scientific equipment. It was also dark and looked like it had been evacuated just moments before we got in. Legion checked his omni-tool and told me we just needed to move up one more level and we would pretty much be at the rendezvous point. I took a look around the room, looking for exits, but instead got distracted by the bodies laying on the tables. Human bodies, cut open and mutilated, were laying on top of them with bubbles protecting them from the atmosphere surrounding them. That meant the people inside were probably still alive, but most likely only from a medical standpoint.

I turned my head away from these experiments and finally found the cargo elevator at the other side of the room. I motioned to Legion to follow me, but we stopped short of it. The door was closed and I could hear some mechanical processes going on behind it; the elevator was in motion and someone was on their way down. We quickly took cover together behind one of the tables and waited. The noises stopped, and the door opened. I peeked around the table and saw a very tall, lumbering behemoth stomp its way out of the elevator. The dinosaur-look of its face and huge exoskeleton of an intense-looking Krogan revealed itself through the poor lighting. He held some kind of huge shotgun and scanned the area with his eyes, looking for us, the intruders. This Krogan, however, had the same mechanical attachments to his body that the human we encountered earlier had.

"I know you're here, human," he said in a very deep voice. I had not been in combat with a Krogan before, but I knew from what Liara told me back on Ilium that they were tough sons of bitches to bring down. "Show yourself before I just blow up this whole lab," he called out. I could not tell if he was bluffing though, so I stayed hidden with Legion. He then fired his shotgun at one of the walls, blowing a tremendous hole through it.

"Last chance human," he said in a calmer voice, reloading his shotgun. I looked over at Legion to give him an order, but it was too late. He already popped up from the cover and took aim at the Krogan with his Widow and fired a shot. I expected that to be the end of the encounter, but I was appalled when I looked over to see the Krogan merely stumble backwards a couple of steps. He had some kind of biotic barrier that absorbed most of the blast. His whole body started to glow purple as he lifted Legion into the air with some biotics and tossed him like a ragdoll against the wall to our left. Knowing the Krogan's barrier had just taken significant damage, I popped up from the cover and started unloading projectiles into him. I forced him backwards with the gunfire as I moved forward towards him. His body started glowing purple again as he grunted and surrounded my body in some biotic field. I couldn't move any part of my body as he regained his composure and walked towards me.

"You insect," he growled at me as he grabbed me by the throat. I tried to gasp for air as his hand did damage to my windpipe, but only failed doing so. I frantically bickered with myself in my head, trying to figure out what to do, knowing I didn't have much time before he finished me off. I gave one final effort to break free of his biotic field, and thankfully, it worked. He still held me by the throat but I quickly punched him as hard as I could in the face, then pounded his elbow until his grip loosened up. I dropped the floor, gasping for breath and feeling a surreal pain shoot through my throat. I knew I could not afford to hesitate, so despite the pain I jumped back up to my feet and ran right towards him. He was still stunned by my punch to his face, so he did not see me coming as I scooped his legs, lifted his heavy ass up and slammed him through one of the tables. It was a good thing there was no body on that table, or else I'm sure it would have splattered everywhere due to the collision.

I was a bit shaken up from slamming him through the table, so I paused for a moment, actually allowing the Krogan a chance to recover. Liara told me that the Krogan prided themselves in being just as brutally efficient at combat without weapons as they were with them, so I decided to use that to my advantage. The lumbering beast got up, picking his shotgun up off the ground with him. While he was recovering, I looked over at Legion to see he was starting compose himself again, recovering from the massive blow the Krogan dealt him. Once the Krogan had all of his attention focused on me again, I took my Revenant out but threw it on the ground next to me.

"Come on big guy. Throw that shotgun away and fight me like a man," I taunted him, hoping he would go for the bait.

"You humans really are a stupid species," he said as he dropped his shotgun, much to my delight. He then began approaching me. I used my peripheral to see Legion picking his Widow back up, still a bit disoriented. I just needed him to deliver one shot, but I had to fight the Krogan long enough for him to recover. I knew human tendencies when it came to a fight, but I did not know exactly what to expect from a Krogan, which made the encounter rather interesting from my standpoint.

The Krogan lounged at me first. I jumped to my right to avoid his big body and cut back to the left to deliver a hard punch to his gut. I could tell he got a little winded from the blow, but he responded by punching me in the jaw with the back of his hand, nearly knocking off my rebreather. I stumbled backwards, tasting some blood in my mouth. He turned around and threw another punch at me, to which I moved my head and locked his arm between my neck and shoulder and hit him again in the gut with my knee. I hit him three more times like that then moved my foot behind his and dove forward to make him trip over it, sending both of us to the ground. He had the harder impact with the floor as I just absorbed some damage to my shoulder and quickly recovered. He got back up, grinning at me.

"I didn't know there was a such thing as a tough human," he said to me.

"I didn't know you Krogan were so weak," I said back to him with a grin, trying to bait him in again. My words must have hit a nerve as he growled at me and threw some purple orb that sent me crashing through a table with one of the semi-alive bodies on it. I pushed the body off me to see the Krogan standing right above me. He threw the punch that would have ended my day, but I dodged it and he ended up lodging his fist into the ground. He desperately tried to pull it back out, but couldn't. I realized we really needed to get back to Shepard and Tali, so having the tactical advantage, I went over to his side, dodged another punch, and snapped his neck. He fell lifelessly to the ground, but Legion decided to blow his head off with his sniper rifle just make sure he was dead.

"Grimm, Blaine that was a Krogan Battlemaster," Legion said to me as he walked up to my side.

"Your point?"

"Cerberus does not work with aliens,"

"I don't think they were working with this guy. Look. He's just another one of their experiments," I responded, pointing out the obvious modifications to his body.

"Also there is no record anywhere of someone winning a fistfight with a Krogan Battlemaster,"

"How do you know?"

"We just searched all known databases,"

"Well make this entry later if you want. We need to get off this base," I said back. We then ran over to the elevator the Krogan had used to reach us. I picked my Revenant back up and we boarded it, watching intently to make sure we were not followed as the doors closed. I relaxed a bit as Legion told the VI to take us one level up. Once we got there, we quickly got off the elevator and made our way around more strange Collector architecture and avoided another patrol of Cerberus mercs. Strange yellow oval-shaped containers lined the walls and ceiling of this hallway, although they were not as large as the ones used to contain human specimens. Once we reached the end of that hallway, we banked right and found the rendezvous point.

"Shepard, we're at the rendezvous point, waiting on you and Tali," I radioed in.

"We're almost there. Just have some mercs in the way,"

"Roger that," I responded and took up a defensive posture with Legion. We waited about three minutes, wondering exactly how far away from us they were. After two more minutes passed, I started to get concerned.

"Shepard, where are you?"

"They've got Tali! Collectors! A merc squad split us up and a group of Collectors grabbed her!" he desperately called out over the radio. My heart started thumping pretty hard, knowing how crucial Tali was to the crew and to the Quarians.

"Where are they taking her? Me and Legion are going to intercept them," I responded.

"One floor above you. They just grabbed her. I can't get to her, I'm under too much fire,"

"Hold your position, we're on our way," I responded and motioned to Legion to follow me. We sprinted back down the hallway until we got to the patrol we ignored earlier. I quickly cooked a fusion grenade and threw it at them, turning them into more icicles upon detonation. We quickly moved until we got back to the elevator, sprinted in, and took it up one more level. When the elevator doors opened, two mercs were waiting for us but we quickly gunned them down and kept moving. We then came up to an intersection where we saw a large group of mercs shooting at one spot across from them. That must have been Shepard they had pinned down. I crouched down, took aim and fired at the mercs with the Revenant. Legion fired his Widow a total of four times as we decimated the unsuspecting group. We ran over to the intersection and Shepard ran over to us from his cover.

"Come on, they went that way," he said as he pointed down the large hallway to our left. We ran together down that hallway, taking a number of turns and vaulting over numerous obstacles. We eventually were able to see Tali unconscious, being carried by some strange, insect-looking creatures towards a spaceship behind some bay doors. The doors started slowly closing. Desperate to make it in time, we sprinted towards them. The thing was, I was able to sprint faster than Legion and Shepard. Those football drills from all those years ago kicked in, and I picked up my pace even more. I got a good ten meters ahead of Shepard and Legion, realizing that I was going to make it through the doors without them. Just before I made my leap of faith through the small crack remaining between the bay doors I turned my head to yell at them.

"Don't worry, I won't let anything happen to Tali!" I yelled out then jumped, barely making it through the doorway. All of that momentum I had kept me going through the air as I entered the zero-g environment of space. I couldn't appreciate Newton's laws of physics any more than I did then, as they allowed me to maintain that momentum I had since no other force acted on me, which enabled me to reach the spaceship just before it blasted off. The impact between the side of my face and the side of the ship hurt, but I grabbed onto a discrete piece of protruding metal next to the doors that the enemy had used to board it and prepared to make a desperate attempt to hold on for dear life. They had not secured the door yet, however, and it harmlessly opened up for me and I fell through. I quickly recovered and ran to a corner behind some peculiar machine and began to make observations of my surroundings.

It was another incredibly dark area with more of those insect-like aliens walking around the area. It didn't take me much longer to figure out that they were Collectors, the things that Shepard and his crew thought they completely eliminated. I had a feeling that base wasn't the only place where they lived. I watched as two of them carried Tali's limp body up a staircase and into another area of the ship. There was nothing I could do for her until I properly surveyed the hostile resistance I would face and effectively eliminated them, so I did more recon on the area. It was a large bay-like area, very similar to what militaries used to house fighter ships and things of that sort. The architecture was clearly not of Collector design, so I figured out that the ship was of human design. My suspicions were confirmed a few moments later as as couple of humans dressed in the same uniforms the Cerberus mercs wore walked down into the bay area.

"The Illusive Man is impressed. He now has the bargaining chip he needs to bait Shepard in and force Quarian cooperation," one of them said to one of the Collectors. It just nodded back and stood before him. All of the Collectors were armed with organic-looking weapons, of which I did not have any clue about. What I also had no clue about was why the Collectors were now working with Cerberus. They brought back the man who killed off their General and and destroyed their entire operation, albeit a Reaper operation, yet the Collectors now seemed so obedient to them.

"Stay here until you are needed again," the Cerberus merc said to them and retreated back into some other area of the ship. I went back to brainstorming the entire scenario in my head. Legion and I did not fight any Collectors on the base, but it was obvious Shepard and Tali did. Did Cerberus have this planned all along? Did they knowingly sacrifice their guys to keep me and Legion busy while they used the more dangerous Collectors to fight Shepard and Tali and ultimately capture her? That was the only conclusion I could come to. And I also guessed that the Collectors were now obedient to Cerberus because they must have used that mind-controlling Reaper technology on them as well. They used it on humans and a Krogan battlemaster, and obviously tried to use it on Batarians and Quarians, so why not the former enemy also? I then went back to checking out the dark, cold, azure bay area infested with a large group of Collector soldiers.

That was when I noticed a horrific, floating entity in the air. It had an insect-look to it as well but was decorated with many humanoid skulls within it. It floated over to the opposite side of the bay and landed on the ground, letting out a sort of shrieking sound. The Collectors then became active, moving around the bay area. I then looked to my right and saw a Collector, with yellow eyes and a fiery luminescence flowing throughout its body, standing right next to me.

"I told you we would meet again, Blaine Grimm," it said to me and then knocked me unconscious. I went through a lapse of visions while I was out. I went through the entire mission with Legion again, saw Mari and Tali a few times, and found myself smoking a cigar again on the same beach where I defeated the Reapers before. I stared at the oversized moon as I exhaled a good amount of smoke, blood dripping from my right arm. I ignored the wound and continued to examine the heavenly body. I could hear the sounds of the jungle behind me as a nice breeze whisked by and calmed my mind down. I smoked the cigar until it shriveled up to my lips, then finally threw it into the sand and stood up. I walked into the water until I was about knee deep, then closed my eyes.

I woke up to find my arms bound together, hanging from the ceiling. A large window to my right allowed me to look out into the cosmos as I struggled to regain my vision. The blurriness eventually faded and I was able to look around. The ship was moving and I could see us approaching some space station relatively close to a star nearing its end of being on the Main Sequence. It was clearly teeming with all sorts of electromagnetic activity. The room was pitch black, but the star illuminated some of my surroundings for me. I twisted around and saw Tali, still unconscious, hanging with her arms bound together from the ceiling in the same configuration as I was in about four meters away. I struggled to move my hands, but clenched my teeth as I felt some sharp blade pierce the skin of my wrist. They figured I would try to escape being their prisoner, so they lined the cuffs I was held in with a razor sharp ring.

Afraid they did the same to Tali's restraints, I looked over, but much to my relief saw no sharp reinforcements around her cuffs. They wanted her alive and weren't being stupid about it, they knew a simple puncture to her suit would likely kill her, especially in this ship. The blood trickled down my arm from my wrist as I began making plans to break free and rescue Tali. And make them pay.


	10. Chapter 10: Wanted

_**Ch. 10: Wanted**_

Once again, I found myself in an all-too familiar situation. They stripped me of my boonie hat, LBV, and my camouflage jacket, but for some reason left my combat exoskeleton and gloves on. My shields were down and my weapons were gone, of course, but I fully expected that. The situation was almost identical to when I was captured in South America by the violent group of cannibalistic terrorists, from the way I was captured to the way I was bounded. There was even someone else present who I intended to rescue from them. The only thing missing was the crazy mother fucker who would torture me, trying to get me to squeal. It didn't take all too long for the last piece of the puzzle to walk into the room. Four Cerberus mercs armed with rifles entered. They walked right up to me and one of them hit me in the head with their rifle. It didn't knock me out, but it did completely disorient me. They unlocked my restraints and dragged me on the ground through a maze of dark, winding hallways until we reached a small docking bay that was also very dimly lit. They hopped into a small transport ship and pulled me in with them and threw me onto the ground. One of them took the pilot seat while the other three stood directly above me, rifles pointed right at my head.

I would normally have figured out how to eliminate my captors and engineer my escape, but I decided to use the situation to my advantage as an opportunity to gain some intelligence on the enemy. I simply looked out a small porthole directly above us as the pilot got the small ship in gear and steered us out of the docking bay. If nothing else, I could look out at the stars while my head throbbed from that rifle butt. The ride was bumpy but short, and allowed me to ultimately regain my composure. I listened as the pilot requested permission to land and of course was granted it by the voice on the other side. The pilot was instructed to land in docking bay 2. I watched out the porthole as the view changed from the star-filled background of space to a pitch-black metallic ceiling. We slowed to a stop and I could feel the unmistakable rumbling of mechanical arms locking the small transport ship in place. The pilot stayed in his spot at the controls while the other three forcefully picked me up from the ground and escorted me off the ship.

The slick appearance of this station bore no resemblance to anywhere else I had been since being woken up from cryo. The floors, walls, and ceiling all were pitch-black in color yet reflective, as if it had all been buffered to perfection. There was very dim lighting and illuminated Cerberus symbols lining the walls. The mercs escorted me through another series of winding hallways until we reached an elevator. They pushed me into it, _alone_, and hit a button from their side which sent me upwards. The ascension lasted only about seven seconds, but that elevator covered a lot of vertical ground. Once it reached the top, I walked out into another identical hallway with only one door on the other end. I did the most unexpected thing possible then: I walked to that one, lonely doorway.

The next room was awe-inspiring to say the least. This one didn't seem to have any walls or ceiling, or transparent ones if it did. It was simply a large platform in front of the star I had seen earlier with one man sitting in a large chair a good five meters in front of me. He had a very expensive-looking suit on, slightly glowing blue eyes, and slicked back, grayish-silver hair. It was the Illusive Man.

"Mr. Grimm, it's a pleasure to finally meet you,"

"The feeling isn't mutual,"

"Not one for introductions, are you?"

"Not for someone who tries to make a deal for my body to use as a pawn,"

"Firstly, you're no one's pawn. You're a very talented soldier, Grimm. You've fought and killed the Reapers before, as I'm sure you have been reminded. Are you aware that they're coming and are planning on wiping out the entire human race?"

"I caught word on that,"

"Good. Then you know our kind is facing the greatest threat of our existence. We're going to need every asset possible to ultimately defeat the Reapers, and your experience and expertise in the matter is going to be crucial in our efforts,"

"I'll do what I need to do. And what I need you to do is to stay out of my way. I'm better off not taking orders or advice from someone I don't trust. If you know anything about me and my past, you know I work best in charge or on my own," I sternly responded. The Illusive Man hesitated before speaking again, only to light a cigarette and take a puff before he continued.

"That's part of the problem, Grimm. You've been successful on your own, but imagine what you can do with a team as highly trained and motivated as you,"

"I've seen so-called soldiers and mercenaries in this day and age, yours particularly. I don't want or need them by my side. They're a bit soft compared to the people I used to work with back in my day,"

"I'm not expecting many to be as good at their job as you are. I know you are working with Commander Shepard. Don't get me wrong, as far as being a combat veteran goes, he is on par with you, but he has a much different resolve. He doesn't see the big picture. He cut ties with me even though I brought him back, I gave him his life back," he said as took a puff of his cigarette and inhaled deeply.

"You ever wonder why that is? Shepard has the right idea, he knows what it's going to take to stop the Reapers. And I'm going to help,"

"You and Shepard infiltrated the Collector Base, which leads me to ask, what were you doing? You may not agree with my methods, but we both want to stop the Reapers. So why sabotage our operation?"

"What we were doing wasn't any of your business. You know I fought the Reapers before. I can tell you first hand you don't need to run all of these insane experiments on people to beat them," I said back. He took a pretty deep puff before responding to me once again.

"Well Mr. Grimm, this hasn't been a pleasant first impression you gave me. I'm going to give you some time to gather your thoughts, so the next time we meet you will be ready to talk,"

"Is that a threat?"

"Not at all. But my men will make sure you're ready to talk soon, even if we need to drag Tali'Zorah into this," he said, nodding his head in my direction. Before I could say anything else, a pair of hands jerked me back and forced me into the hallway. Two more rifles were pointed at my head as I was escorted back to the elevator and brought down to the transport shuttle. Just like that, I retraced my short trip from The Illusive Man's office back to the original Cerberus ship like watching a video being played backwards, with the same four-merc detail guarding me. When we returned and docked at the main ship, one of the mercs hit me in the head again with a rifle, this time completely knocking me out. When I woke back up, I was in the same holding area again where Tali was. I looked around, and without thinking about it attempted to move my hands again, only to have my wrists get cut pretty good once more by the disk around them.

A Cerberus merc followed by two Collectors walked in unarmed. Puzzled by the lack of weaponry, I then noticed the suitcase in the mercenary's hand and the purple glow around the two Collectors. The Collectors took position on either side of the door they all had used to enter while the merc approached me. He set the suitcase down on the ground next to me while he gave me a strange smile. I merely smirked back at him, feeling the blood dripping from my wrist onto my head now. I certainly did not appreciate that sharp disk placed around my hands, which were bound to the ceiling. I watched as he pulled out a surgical knife from the suitcase, but instead of bringing it up and threatening me with it like I expected, he walked over to the unconscious Tali. Fully alert, I watched his every move, trying to figure out whether he was bluffing or was actually planning on hurting her.

"Hey dipshit. Why don't you come over here and have a chat with me," I called out to him, attempting to divert his attention from Tali. He just looked over at me with a menacing smile then continued moving towards her.

"Sergeant Grimm, the Illusive Man simply wanted to speak with you from the start and possibly give you employment opportunities. Seeing as you have a hatred for the Reapers, you most likely would have enjoyed them," he said back to me, walking briskly and casually while toying with the knife between his fingers. He stopped about two feet short of Tali's body. "He sees you as a nuisance now, a thorn in his side since you are working with Shepard. But still useful," he continued, now brushing the flat side of the blade against Tali's thigh.

"So what do you want with her? Leave her alone and deal with me," I said back. He began sliding the knife up and down her thigh, dangerously close to cutting into her protective suit.

"The Illusive Man has plans for you. Her on the other hand, we've already gotten everything out of her that we can. Shepard doesn't know that either of you are alive, and even if he did he has no way of finding this ship. She wants to die a martyr, and I will be pleased to oblige that desire to this pesky Quarian," he responded. I had to act quickly or else the maniac was most likely going to kill Tali right in front of me.

"I'm sure you had some of your half-assed friends die at my hands back on the Collector base. You don't care that I gunned them down without regard? You're just the Illusive Man's puppet, doing his work for a few credits. He doesn't care about you or them. You're just as expendable to him as your inaccurate friends were," I said back to him, striking a deep nerve. He turned around and looked at me with a cold, hard glare. Unfortunately for him, I had been wearing down the cheap restraints they put around my ankles the whole time, readying myself for attack.

"He's expecting you to meet with him again soon, and has asked me to make sure you are ready to talk. I don't think he will doubt my methods if you show up with a few extra wounds," he hissed at me.

"I don't think he will either. Especially considering he can kill you whenever he pleases, just like I can do to your worthless friends," I snarled back at him. He then lounged forward at me with the knife, taking aim at my legs. As my adrenaline went sky high, I could feel a few pricks into my skin and my exoskeleton fed my body with the power chemicals. I snapped the ankle restraint off in an instant, split my legs apart and clamped them on his elbow and used as much momentum as I could create to snap it completely out of place. I used that same momentum to quickly swing my legs up and slammed my boots into the flat bottom of the disk around my wrists. Knowing I had only seconds before the two Collectors would try to get me under control, I pushed my hands through the circle using my legs, the inner blades shredding my kevlar-reinforced gloves off and putting deep gashes in my hands. I flung my body around and landed on my feet as I fell down then sprung forward on top of the merc to avoid two concentrated blasts of biotic energy in my direction. He grabbed the knife from the ground with his other hand and attempted to stab me with it. I caught his wrist, broke it, and plunged the knife into his own throat. His entire body squirmed beneath me as the blood from my hands and wrists flowed onto the floor with the blood from this neck.

One of the Collectors approached me then, still engulfed in a purple biotic field, and used its abilities to launch me against the large window. I landed on my feet a bit shaken and sprinted towards my attacker. It made some kind of motion with its hands at me, but wasn't quick enough to stop me from lunging in, wrapping my arms around its torso, lifting it up and smashing it head-first into the wall. The other Collector was right behind me at that point. It surrounded my body with a purple biotic field that rendered me unable to move. This one was a lot stronger than the field the Krogan had put me in earlier though, and I simply could not even budge while inside of it.

"You are an impressive specimen," it said to me in its deep voice. It walked around in front of me, staring at me with glowing yellow eyes. It had the same fiery luminescence as the one that knocked me out earlier had flowing through its body. "We can use you, Blaine Grimm. Submit to our will and we will spare you. This is your last chance. The next time we meet, you will make your decision. You will either doom your entire species or save them," it continued before disappearing into the air. The field around me disappeared and I could move again. With my immediate enemies taken care of, I removed the knife from the dead merc's throat and ran over to Tali. I could see her eyes light up as she began to regain consciousness.

"Grimm? Wh-what's going on?" she groggily asked as she watched me raise the blade up to her restraints.

"Getting us out of here. Hold still," I whispered as I cut her loose. I then got down and cut the restraint from her feet as well. "Can you walk?"

"I – I'll try," she said, attempting to take a step forward but only falling back into my hands.

"Take it easy, I got you," I said to her with a smile and picked her up over my shoulder. I then quietly walked with her to the lone doorway into this room. I peeked around the corners, but saw no one at all. I moved into the hallway and quietly crept down it, looking for signs or anything that might give me some kind of sense of direction. After going through a few more winding passages, I finally found a sign pointing me to the shuttle bay. I had no kind of pilot training before, so I was going to have to rely on Tali flying us out of there. As we entered the bay however, there were several dead Cerberus mercs lying on the ground. I then felt the barrel of a gun get pushed directly into the back of my head.

"Drop Tali'Zorah vas Normandy or I will blow your head off," the male voice said to me. I turned around, ready to deal with some more Cerberus mercs but found myself face-to-face with a small group of five armed Quarians, all wearing the same black fabric over their enviro-suits.

"Quiet down, I'm not with Cerberus," I whispered to the one in front.

"Put the guns down, he's a friend. He saved my life. Let me down Grimm," Tali spoke up for me. I obliged and helped her from my shoulder to her feet. My exoskeleton's super-adrenaline injection sped up my heart rate so I lost a lot of my blood as a result of the previous struggle. I felt incredibly weak after I let her down thanks to the profuse bleeding from my hands and wrists and the probable concussion I was dealing with from those rifle blows.

"Did you guys kill those mercs?" I asked as my vision started to get a little blurry.

"Yes now lets go. We need to get off this..." was all I heard before I fainted. I woke back up on a small transport ship with Tali and one of those Quarians wearing all-black knelt down beside me. I could feel someone's three-fingered hand on my head and determined it to be Tali's, but I could not feel my own hands. I looked down through my blurry vision and saw them wrapped up in some of that black fabric they were wearing and could tell that someone had applied some medigel. As I regained my senses, I was able to see out a small porthole to my right and took note of the fact that we were in motion through some part of space with purple, highly energized particles forming patches of "space clouds".

"Grimm? Can you hear me?" Tali said as I fully came back to my senses.

"Yeah, yeah I can hear you. Where are we?" I responded, attempting to stand up only to fall down to my knees. Tali and the other Quarian immediately grabbed my arms and helped me back up to my feet.

"We are in the Perseus Veil. These are members of the Admarsu, my people's most highly regarded special forces unit and personal guard to the Admiralty Board. For obvious reasons they can't tell you their names or what ships they are crew of," she explained to me.

"Tradition isn't necessary in this case. I am Reed'Caro vas Neema," the Quarian said to me.

"You are crew of the Neema? I never saw you around after my pilgrimage," Tali said.

"Always on special assignments, ma'am. I really never stepped foot on the Neema that much after I was selected for the Admarsu," he responded then turned to me, extending his hand. "Sergeant Grimm, Tali has told us a lot about you. It's a pleasure,"

"Pleasure is all mine," I responded, shaking his hand. "How did you find us, anyway?"

"Commander Shepard alerted the Migrant Fleet after you two were captured. The Admiralty Board turned to us to track Tali down and rescue her. I can't really divulge much more into our methods other than telling you that we may be a species bound to a primitive means of transportation and living, but not to a primitive means of reconnaissance and looking out for our own. Some underestimate our military capabilities. It didn't take us very long to find the vessel you two were taken captive on, with the help of some intel from a Shadow Broker agent. We followed it out to the Illusive Man's main Cerberus base and broke in and rescued you two," he said. So Liara ultimately helped get us out of there. It was then that I realized that some time must have passed since our assault on the Collector base.

"How long did you follow the Cerberus ship for?"

"About two days," Reed said.

"They drugged the both of us. The toxins are out of our systems now, but they kept you out for about two days and kept me out for a little bit longer," Tali added.

"So what are we doing in the Perseus Veil?"

"Naturally Cerberus sent vessels to track us down, but the last place they were going to follow us to was here. So we are moving through the Veil as stealthily as possible, so we do not attract any unwanted Geth attention. We will wait a day or two before we return to the Migrant Fleet where Commander Shepard will be meeting you," Reed said. I nodded and started to cringe as I felt a scathing pain shoot through my hands. They noticed my pain and quickly gave me some more medigel. Reed walked over to his team member that was piloting the ship while a female member of his team came over next to Tali to speak to me.

"Sergeant Grimm, I am Enid'Raja vas Jimetta, chief medical officer of the Admarsu. I was sent along because I have extensive knowledge of both the physiology of my people and of humans," she said to me, introducing herself.

"Nice to meet you. You know what's going on with my hands?" I desperately responded, feeling another surge of pain shoot through them.

"Sergeant, your hands suffered extensive structural and motor damage on that ship. They are going to take a while to fully heal,"

"So what's going to happen to them, they need to be cut off?" I asked, jokingly.

"No. But for your nerves, bones, and what's left of your muscle tissue to be preserved, you're going to need to wear those gloves we have made for you. They will continue to provide you with full functionality until your actual hands are healed back to full mobility. You're unfortunately going to have to deal with the pain, it's going to come and go. And unfortunately, there's a chance you may need complete restructuring of them if they don't heal properly," she continued explaining with her mysterious, glowing eyes locked onto mine. I was tired of asking questions, so I politely excused myself and walked over to a seat on the side of the ship right next to the porthole. It even had armrests, so I relaxed and leaned my head back and looked out at our cosmic surroundings.

I used to always wonder what it would be like to travel among the stars, to be far away from my home planet. The trip to Jupiter for orbital-assault training was never enough to satisfy that desire. I would often sit out on a beach or anywhere I could find privacy when deployed, alone envisioning myself traveling through space. It was always instrumental in cooling off my nerves and warding off the horrors I would see in combat. Many simply couldn't grasp the fact that a combat-addicted tough-guy war machine like myself could become adversely affected by the tolls of combat, but truth is I'm only human. My daydreams and escapes from reality were my therapy, and it was all I needed. Needless to say, the ethereal scenery outside the window was breathtaking and incredibly soothing for my mind; it made me completely forget about the searing pain in my hands. As dangerous as the region in space was, being controlled by the supposedly rewritten Geth that even Legion was still having trouble determining the virus' outcome, it was awe-inspiring to say the least.

The Quarians spoke amongst themselves while I continued to gaze out into space and the purple "space clouds" in an almost meditative state. They thought they were being quiet, but I could hear my name come up a few times in their conversations. Rather than being a stuck up tool bag, I invited them over to talk to me. We had a fun, mostly lighthearted conversation for the next two and a half hours, mostly asking each other personal questions and learning more about each other's species and culture. The younger female on their team, Jade'Kalle vas Gravist pondered aloud how I got so musclebound and asked me what substitutes I used to make it happen. I was initially offended, but understood that I probably asked questions in a similar manner to them so I kindly explained my old diet and workout routine. That was something I really needed to get back on top of once I had the chance. I then reiterated my promise to help their people find a new home, hopefully make peace with the Geth, and ultimately end their way of life as a Flotilla for the better. In response, they somberly discussed the way their species is perceived by the rest of the galaxy, and how few were as supportive of them as I was. They thanked me for my ability to see past their mistakes and see them for who they really are. Just as I had mentioned before to Tali, I told them about having the chance to do something similar for a people in my past, but ultimately did not. Reminiscing over those decisions got me very emotional again, and I almost had a tear drop but I refrained myself from allowing one to fall. I was never good with those kinds of emotions. In an attempt to lighten up the mood, I told them "I got your back", which merely caused confusion and caused them to ask me why I literally wanted their backs. I smiled and explained what I meant, seemingly embarrassing them.

Suddenly, we heard a beeping sound and the VI on board alerted the Quarian who was piloting the ship that we had an incoming vessel. "That can't be Cerberus," he muttered to himself as Reed and Enid ran over to him. I looked out the window but could not get a good enough view of what was behind the ship to see what was headed our direction.

"Cut all power off, everyone be quiet," Reed ordered as the lights went off and I continued to scan the porthole. Sure enough a very strange-looking ship came into view and was approaching fast. As it got closer, Tali whispered to me that it was a patrolling Geth ship. It clearly was aware of our ship's presence and swiftly moved in next to us.

"Reed, it's the Geth. They will kill us if they find us here in the Veil," Tali whispered.

"We can hide in the engine room, lets go," he said back. We all quietly made our way to an opening in the floor, to which a ladder was attached. I let The Quarian crew go down first. Tali was the last to make her way down, and when she got to the bottom it was clear there was no more space for anyone else. Aside from that, it was unlikely the Geth were going to take one quick glance and leave; they were probably going to tear the place apart looking for the crew. I looked down at the dock on my exoskeleton and made sure my shields were up, then looked back down at the group.

"I'm going to stay up here. I'll talk to them and make sure you guys are safe," I whispered down to them.

"Grimm, no!" Tali shouted.

"It's okay, I'll be fine. Maybe they'll recognize me because of Legion,"

"Here, take this pistol, in case you need it," Reed said to me and threw his heavy pistol up to me.

"Please be safe Grimm. I... we need you," Tali said.

"Don't worry so much. Time to put my skills to work again," I responded with a smile then closed the hatch over them. I put the pistol in the holster on my leg and stood directly in front of the entrance, which was connected to the decontamination chamber on the side of the ship. If the Geth discovered the ship had Quarians on board, they would probably determine it to be a reconnaissance group, or guerrilla fighters getting ready to launch a quick strike. The discovery of one, lonely human on board would probably offset their suspicions. I could hear the chamber get cycled and heard strange sounds on the other side of the door. I crossed my right hand over my left directly in front of me, leaning them against my legs while anticipating the coming exchange. After anxiously waiting, the door to the decontamination chamber finally opened and five armed Geth stood before me. Four of them stood at about the same height and had dark, gunmetal armor while the fifth one stood about two feet taller and had heavier, red armor with two tall pieces of armor attached to its back. They quickly aimed their rifles at me and slowly walked in, watching my every move. I raised my hands above my head in an effort to calm them down.

"This one is Sergeant Blaine Grimm," one of the troops exclaimed.

"Sergeant Blaine Grimm, eliminator of the Old Machines," the red one said to me.

"Yes that's me. And you are?"

"Geth," it responded. I then remembered that they had a problem with referring to themselves individually, so I let the subject go.

"Right. Is there something I can help you with?"

"We are interested in why your ship is in our territory,"

"Took a wrong turn. Got caught up in that issue of Fornax over there and flew a few hundred light years in the wrong direction," I responded, attempting to use something to distract it. It looked over at the strange magazine I spotted on one of the other seats on the ship, then back at me while tilting its head.

"Sergeant Blaine Grimm, we detected more lifeforms on this ship. What is their nature and location?"

"You got that wrong, I'm the only one on this ship,"

"We believe you are not telling us what is fact. We will seize this vessel and destroy it,"

"You know me, apparently. I've got all kinds of information about the Old Machines, the Quarians, human fleets. Whatever you need, just please don't destroy my ship," I responded with a major bluff, hoping it would work. The red one looked over at the rest its troops and made some strange noises then looked back over at me.

"Come with us Sergeant Blaine Grimm. You will not be harmed and we will return you to your ship in a timely manner,"

"Give me a few minutes to gather some things," I responded to them. They all just stood there and continued to stare at me. "As in leave me alone for a few minutes. You have my word that I will come with you,"

They walked into the decontamination chamber and I closed the door behind them. I quickly threw open the hatch to the engine room and peeked inside. "What the hell are you doing, Sergeant Grimm?" Reed asked me.

"Saving your asses. I'm not really going to give them any information. Stay down here until I get back,"

"What if they don't let you go?" Tali said.

"Then I'll kill them all and fight my way back," I responded. Tali threw me a few thermal clips that I strapped to my utility belt and kept hidden beneath my exoskeleton. Enid gave me a rebreather device and Jade then threw me her knife and I attached it to my sheath. "I'll be back, I promise," I said then closed the hatch on them. I walked over to the contamination chamber, opened the door and entered it. I stood in between two of the troops and directly behind the red one. The chamber cycled, and I followed them aboard their ship.


	11. Chapter 11:  Lost World

_**Ch. 11: Lost World**_

The inside of this Geth ship was not as I expected. It was completely bland. It was of a dark purple color with no windows, seats, or anywhere really to rest. I followed the boarding party into a large chamber and noticed some immediate rumbling, followed by the unmistakable force of a ship going into motion. I ran up to the large, red Geth and forced it to turn around.

"Where are we going?" I cautiously asked with the utmost of curiosity.

"Grimm, Blaine we are a mobile platform connected to that which you know as Legion. We understand you have the intention of creating peace between us and the creators," it responded.

"So I'm talking to you, Legion?"

"We are all Legion. We share that mobile platform's data,"

"Okay, fine. But you still haven't answered my question,"

"We wish to show you the state of the creator homeworld. You are the only organic we deem we can trust to share this data with, as you are not from our time or consciousness. You do not possess any of the apparent emotional bonds between other organics and the creators. We are taking you to Rannoch,"

"You're taking me to the Quarian homeworld?"

"Yes,"

"I understand you want me to help orchestrate peace between your species, but I don't quite understand what taking me there is going to do to help that,"

"It is simply an attempt from our side to convey our will for peace. Perhaps you can gather necessary data on their homeworld to distribute to them, and carry on our message. We have only fought for our continued existence, not because of aggression, and we have fought this battle for too long. We know the Old Machines are approaching. To preserve our future, we wish to disengage all hostilities to ensure our own readiness as a nation against the aggressors," it responded to me, moving its head from side to side as it spoke. Words couldn't describe how surprised I was. These machines were incredibly rational and seemed to display some degree of emotion through their insinuations of peace and trust. They desired and supported. They had a human-like logic and consciously considered others. I couldn't look at them as merely machines any more, or simply as A.I.'s, not after this conversation. I had my suspicions of their self-awareness from my dialogue with Legion, but I had no clue that they had developed into something deeper than that.

"I was brought back to stop the Reapers. That's what I intend to do. Maybe I can make the galaxy a better place while I'm still here. Lets go to Rannoch. I want to end this war between the Geth and the Quarians," I solemnly responded. Pain started shooting through my hands again, and I immediately hunched over and clenched them. The red Geth approached me as I brought my hands in close to my stomach.

"Grimm, Blaine. Your hands bear the colors of the creators' Admarsu,"

"Yeah, they said they fixed them up,"

"We detect massive structural damage to the organic parts of your hands. It appears you have had synthetic implants to help stabilize them,"

"Synthetic implants?" I asked and furiously grabbed at the gloves covering my hands. As I pulled them off, I could see my hands were no longer normal human hands; they had black mechanical pieces that mimicked hand structure. They appeared to be interwoven into my flesh, and I strangely had sensation in even those parts. "What the fuck is this?"

"It appears you sustained massive structural damage to your hands. The creators used technology similar to ours to enable continued motor function in your hands,"

"Can I just get flesh back? And be a normal human?"

"Unlikely,"

"Just great," I responded, looking at my new cyborg appendages. My hands were half human half Geth, half flesh half machine. At least the rest of me wasn't like that. I couldn't believe that much damage was done to my hands back on the Cerberus ship... that was a hell of an adrenaline boost my exoskeleton gave me, considering I didn't feel any of that.

The flight to Rannoch did not seem to take very long. I wondered how long Tali and the other Quarians actually waited down in the engine room on their ship. I didn't have a communications device on me, so I was unable to inform them of where I was headed. Legion obviously knew where I was though, so I had no doubts about him informing Shepard and everyone else. After about two hours of traveling in complete silence, with the exception of the strange robotic noises some of the other Geth on board would make to each other, I finally felt the vessel decelerate. I could tell that we had just entered orbit, then suddenly, there was no gravity. The disappearance of something I took for granted surprised the hell out of me, and I quickly flapped my arms, attempting to establish some kind of control over myself. The old-school training I endured on Jupiter's moons kicked in, and I was composed once more.

"Grimm, Blaine follow us. We are entering Base Two Zero Three One. It is in orbit around the creators' homeworld," the red Geth said to me. I nodded and shimmied my way behind it and followed it through a series of airlocks. The final airlock reintroduced gravity, although I felt like I was twice as heavy in it as I was on Earth. We walked through the next doorway as it opened and walked into a circular room with two more doorways on either side and a large, arced window in front of us, overlooking the beautiful, mostly green planet.

"I thought Geth don't use windows," I commented.

"We anticipated the eventual arrival of organics," it said back to me, commenting no further on the motivation behind it. So the Geth were planning this all along, to eventually offer and make terms for peace with the Quarians.

"Where to now?" I asked.

"We will take you to this station's central server hub. From there we will activate our transport system to bring you to the planet's surface. We will accompany you," it responded, shifting its head from left to right while talking to me. I then followed it through the door to our right, and we walked together down a long catwalk surrounded by glass that curved to the left, creating part of the large arc of the station. I continued staring out at Rannoch as I followed the red Geth around the winding corridor, admiring its beauty. The scenery nearly completely distracted me from what happened next.

I heard a loud 'dink' in front of me and quickly snapped my neck forward to see what it was. I found myself looking through a large hole in the red Geth's midsection until it fell to its knees and collapsed on the floor. Standing in front of me was a human dressed in all-black armor with a mask covering everything but her eyes. She was holding some pretty heavy looking weapon, aiming at me while staring intensely into my eyes. Standing behind her was what appeared to be another human also clad in heavy black armor and black face mask; however, the blue hands told me otherwise. I found it incredibly strange to be confronted by a human and Asari commando duo in Geth space. I twitched my eyes around for a couple of seconds, gathering as much information about my surroundings as possible without making any sudden moves. I discovered, as I initially was afraid of, that there was no cover or anything I could even use to my advantage for that matter. I could have tried to draw my pistol and pull the trigger quicker than she could react, but I decided to go with diplomacy on this one.

"I love those brown eyes. Got a name?" I asked her.

"Put your hands behind your head and walk over here slowly," she responded in an intense, almost sexy tone of voice. Not willing to cooperate just yet, I continued the conversation.

"Damn that's a long name. Mind shortening it for me?" I pressed on.

"Now," she responded, pulling a small lever on her gun and initiating some strange light mechanism on the side of it. I did part of what she asked and put my hands behind my head.

"I'll meet you halfway sweetheart. Tell me who you are and why you're here, and I might consider fulfilling the rest of your request,"

"My name doesn't matter. Who I work for might... we can discuss that when we get on my ship,"

"You know, pointing a gun at someone and killing their synthetic friend isn't the best way to get their trust,"

"Look here you idiot, that Geth was one of the Heretics, which we have evidence are being controlled by the Reapers. Not all of them were successfully converted by the virus Commander Shepard uploaded into their systems, and this one was an infiltrator that was going to kill you. Half of the stations in orbit around Rannoch are controlled by Reaper Heretics converted to true Geth while the other half are failed cases. This station is one of the failed cases," she said as she retracted her weapon.

"Hold on, you know Commander Shepard?" I asked, becoming rather suspicious.

"Yes... I... look we just need to get you off this station before any of the other Heretic stations respond. I promise I will tell you everything," she responded. I then approached her and joined her and the silent Asari. We started jogging down the rest of the corridor until we reached a large chamber. The human female went through the doorway to the chamber first, followed by the Asari commando. I entered after them and we immediately came under fire. The human grabbed me, and with a surprising amount of force pushed me behind a crate on the ground and dove next to me. The Asari then jumped behind another crate in the room to our right.

"Stay down!" she shouted at me as she waited for a break in the fire then leaned around the crate and took a few shots downrange. The floor right next to her sparked as multiple projectiles narrowly missed and collided with the metallic ground. She obviously didn't know who I was and didn't know this was the kind of situation in which I thrived.

"Doesn't look like you managed to do much, how about you stay down and let me do some shooting?" I demanded. I looked over at the Asari, who was going back and forth trading shots with our assailants and occasionally launching concentrated blasts of biotic energy at them. I quickly peeked over the crate and found a more snug place to take cover.

"Actually, we're just getting started," she responded. She looked over at her Asari team member and gave some kind of hand signal to her. They then disengaged from their respective covers and laid down an intense barrage of fire. Seconds later, the firefight was over and we all stood up. I surveyed the battleground and saw nothing but limp, lifeless Geth corpses scattered around the room, about ten of them to be exact. I was impressed.

"That's some good stuff right there, Miss..."

"Williams. Ashley Williams," she responded, retracting her helmet into the back of her armor through some sort of mechanism and letting her hair fall down.

"Now it all makes sense, that's how you know about Shepard and the Geth. But why are you here in Geth space?"

"Special mission from Admiral Hackett, he's a close friend of your former man-in-charge General Adkins. He told me where to find you, and asked that I get you back to Citadel space,"

"Why you? Why not Shepard?"

"I was close to the Veil, on an assignment I can't even tell Shepard or you about. I got the message from Admiral Hackett maybe a couple of hours ago. He said that you were intercepted by Heretic Geth. He just wanted to make sure you got back to Citadel space in one piece,"

"Systems Alliance working with Asari commandos, interesting. There's more to it than that,"

"I can't talk about it right now. Come on lets..." she said, but I decided to cut her off as I was tired of the lack of information.

"Bullshit. If Hackett is friends with General Adkins, and Hackett knows about me, then he knows I can handle myself out here. Why did he send you to come get me?" I sternly said. After a small pause in the conversation, she began to respond.

"The Alliance is on the verge of war with the Batarian Hegemony. We all know the Reapers are coming, whether the Council wants to admit it or not. The Council also doesn't want a full scale conflict to break out. Everyone can at least agree on that,"

"I still don't see what this has to do with me,"

"Look, you've been away from the Normandy for about two and a half days now. Admiral Hackett got a hold of Shepard and informed him that he would find and rescue you and Tali pretty much right after he got off the Collector base. Then Hackett gave Shepard some intel about some scientist named Dr. Kenson, who had evidence of an incoming Reaper invasion,"

"What kind of evidence?"

"Some artifact, they called it Object Rho. Anyways, long story short, Dr. Kenson and her team were actually indoctrinated the whole time and tried to capture Shepard. He escaped, and initiated their project's countermeasure to holding off the Reaper invasion,"

"How?" I asked. Before she answered, she looked at the ground, clearly shaken, then back up at me.

"He launched the asteroid Dr. Kenson's base was on directly into the Alpha Relay, which the Reapers could have used to quickly span the galaxy,"

"Well that's great, it's definitely going to slow those pieces of shit down a bit,"

"Yes, that's good and all, but Sergeant, the collision destroyed that entire system. Over three hundred thousand Batarians dead," she responded. That was when everything came into perspective. Here I am, trying to stop an ancient war between the Geth and the Quarians, while my own race was on the brink of war with the Batarians. It made sense, what Shepard did. But I was fully aware of the fact that the rest of the galaxy was defiant against all evidence of the Reapers, and that this would simply be seen as an act of terrorism, or even worse, an attempt at genocide. This seemed like more of a setup to me, however. Humanity had proven more than once that it was a challenging opponent to the Reapers, but what kind of rush were they really in to get to us?

"Williams... This is exactly what the Reapers want..."

"What do you mean?"

"It's obvious this was a setup. They want the galaxy in as much disarray as possible prior to their invasion. They know that for some reason, the current inhabitants of the galaxy are more formidable foes than previous civilizations they wiped out. They're still controlling these Heretic Geth, trying to keep the tension between Quarians and Geth. I've read one of Shepard's notes about the Rachni, how it's likely the Reapers tainted them and turned them on the Galaxy. And now this, luring Shepard in, knowing that either their invasion would begin or they could throw the galaxy into even more turmoil. They planned this all out, but Shepard is going to look like the bad guy,"

"Which is exactly why we need your help," the Asari said in a very familiar voice. I looked over to her and watched as she removed her helmet, exposing her familiar face.

"Liara?"

"It's me, Sergeant Grimm. My friend Feron is keeping operations going at my base so that I could come out here with Ms. Williams to find you. I also tipped Admiral Hackett off about your whereabouts,"

"So what happens now?"

"Commander Shepard is going to have to stand trial on Earth. The Alliance is going to do everything in its power to appease the Hegemony and try to ease tensions now, even if it means punishing the most iconic human in the galaxy,"

"That's bullshit, we're going to need him when the Reapers find their way into the rest of the galaxy,"

"Exactly. Our only hope is to find some other kind of irrefutable evidence of the Reapers, something that shows that they are on the approach and that their arrival is imminent, and we need to find it quick. They are already technically in the galaxy, on the edge and in transit to the next available relay," Liara responded. Thoughts then began storming through my head. Where the hell were we going to find more Reaper evidence? Surely they didn't just leave artifacts scattered around the galaxy for the purpose of a damn easter egg hunt. Finding a Reaper and killing it, then dragging its oversized ass to the galactic community might work, but that seemed pretty unlikely to happen. That's when I caught something odd going on outside the window to my right. I motioned to Ashley and Liara to come over to me.

"There's something going on down there, look," I quickly stated, referring to the convoy of ten Geth ships that were approaching Rannoch, which I noticed from the corner of my eye. I walked over to the porthole with Ashley and observed the militaristic motion of the Geth vessels, seemingly in an echelon formation. "They're mobilizing, responding to something going on on the planet,"

"Those are all Heretic Geth ships too, what are they doing?" Ashley commented. A large group of Heretic Geth, _Reaper-controlled Geth_, suddenly flocking at the exact same time to the planet's surface? More than a coincidence. We were just talking about finding something proving the Reapers' existence and intentions, and it was quite possibly just sitting in front of our faces the whole time. Something on Rannoch.

"We need to get planet-side. We need to recon the Geth activities and find out what they are going to,"

"Grimm, we need to get back to Citadel Space," Ashley responded.

"Look, we need to see if there's anything we can learn about the Heretics. They have all these orbital stations. They've been dwelling here for hundreds of years. They still worship the Reapers. What are the chances that there's something down there that we can recover or observe?"

"You have a point Sergeant Grimm," Liara followed up.

"Lets go to your ship. We'll engage in a clandestine op, keep hidden from the Geth at all times. We will follow them and gather and analyze any intel about their build up we can find. We'll make it short, about an hour long time window. In and out, then we'll leave and get the hell out of the Perseus Veil. We can always come back for a more major recovery operation if this one produces nothing," I said.

"Lets do it," Ashley responded. They both put their helmets back on and we began tactically moving through a corridor out of the large room we were in. We then entered another long, twisted hallway lined by large windows. As we moved towards their ship, we could see more Geth ships detach from nearby orbital stations and deploy to Rannoch's surface. There was definitely some kind of major gathering going on. I tried analyzing it in my head as we moved, and ended up likening it to a human mobilization. My guess was that they were consolidating forces, gearing up for some kind of offensive. And by the looks of it, it was a major offensive. More Geth ships approached the planet's surface as we finally reached a small tunnel where their ship was attached to. We clambered through the tunnel and into the ship.

Once we landed inside the ship, Ashley gave me some black armor to cover my exoskeleton. I put it on and pushed my biomechanical hands through, strangely feeling no pain for once. Liara tossed me a black helmet, very similar to the ones they were wearing, and I put it on. I then found a pair of gloves and slipped them over my inhuman hands and grabbed a Vindicator battle rifle from a small weapons locker in the opposite corner of the ship and took a seat next to Liara. I checked the status of my shields and made sure I was properly equipped for combat.

The eery azure glow of the small cabin directly behind the pilot soothed my mind as Ashley put the ship into gear. Liara checked her gear as well as I leaned my head back against the headrest, resting my arms on my lap, rifle secured between my legs. The glow cast onto us emanated from the control screen in front of the pilot's seat, and reflected off the shiny metallic interior of the ship back onto us. Only a small porthole provided any exterior sensation. I felt the ship thrusters engage as we went into motion and completely relaxed my body.

"We're going to go in about one kilometer across Rannoch's terminator, so that we have a better chance at remaining unseen. The Geth will likely pick up on our presence if we land any closer to them," Ashley stated as she began steering us towards our destination.

"Sounds good. We can move in through the dark, and find their rendezvous point. Recon their activities and see if there's anything we can possibly recover and take with us," I responded, echoing what I had said minutes earlier. I looked out the overhead porthole at the stars as we passed them, noticing the iridescent glow of Rannoch's atmosphere as we began to descend into its atmosphere. The flight took about ten minutes, moving at a speed slow enough so as to not attract any unwanted Geth attention. The ship's speed decayed at a constant rate as we decelerated towards the surface. Soon enough, I could see trees blocking the view out of the porthole despite it being night time where we landed. We eventually came to a halt as we finally hit the ground.

"Follow my lead, I'll take us there," I told Ashley and Liara. They both acknowledged with a nod, then followed me to the side door of the ship. Liara hit a button that opened the side door, and I took point directly into the jungle in front of us. Much to my horror, it brought back memories of the jungle where I fought the Reapers. I paused for a brief moment, taking in the situation and calming my nerves, then continued to lead us forward. I could hear strange screeches and howls from the native animals of the planet as I pushed forward through the brush. I checked over my shoulder to see Ashley and Liara both following me, all of us crouching to avoid branches and vines. I instinctively pulled out my knife and began chopping through the heavier parts to carve us a more direct path to the Geth rendezvous.

As I cut through the next batch of vines, I suddenly got a real bad migraine and had to stop. My head began thumping really hard as I collapsed to my knees, shaking almost uncontrollably. Liara and Ashley quickly ran to me and began asking me what's going on, but I couldn't respond. I felt almost like I had lost complete control of my body. I then closed my eyes and reopened them to find myself standing alone, in the middle of nowhere on a dark barren landscape. The sky above me was black and littered with stars and galaxies. I could feel some sort of ominous presence nearby. Armed only with my hands and words, I prepared for the sinister force to approach me. And soon enough, it did.

"Blaine Grimm. This is your last opportunity. Shepard gave up his, we highly suggest you do not give up yours," the unmistakeable voice of Harbinger said. I looked to my right and saw the enormous ship approach me. It stopped about five meters short of where I was standing.

"This realm is the destiny of your species. It will be wiped clean from the universe. It will be decimated and forgotten. You cannot change what is going to happen. Shepard only temporarily delayed the inevitable,"

"What do you mean this realm is the destiny of my species?"

"This desolate wasteland is what your Earth will become. It is what every planet in the galaxy will become. You are looking at your galaxy's future. All of your civilizations will fall. Do not be ignorant in thinking you can break a cycle that has persisted since the dawn of existence," Harbinger responded. I took a quick look around, only to find my surroundings were completely isotropic and deserted.

"What's the point of this cycle?" I asked.

"The cycle is your species' salvation, as well as our own. It keeps the balance of the galaxy and the immediate universe in a delicate state, one that must stand for reasons your kind is incapable of comprehending. Our existence transcends your very being,"

"Transcends my very being?"

"Yes. Your mortal existence is simply that which became of what was. Mere mortals are not meant to endure. They temporarily exist as a component of the universe, but do not contribute to the grand scale," it responded. I was truthfully only extremely confused by Harbinger's words, and decided not to press on it any longer.

"So why did you bring me here?"

"It's time for you to make a choice, Blaine Grimm. You can hand yourself and the human race over to serve us or be wiped from the plane of existence,"

"Why do you want us humans?"

"We see the value in your kind. You develop and advance as a civilization far faster than any that existed before you. Your kind is capable of accomplishments that can potentially transcend the divide between mortal and immortal. Join us, and you will be spared,"

"You want us to be your damn slaves. You think you know us so well. You apparently failed to realize that humans will not be conquered by anyone. We do not allow ourselves to be controlled by others. We are an independent nation, free of the will to submit or concede. We would rather fight to the last breath than become the servants of an alien race that simply wants us as their pets. And I can tell you this, we will not give up if you invade and try to destroy our sovereignty. Plain and simple. You're some big badass machine that is used to killing off entire civilizations, but for what? To keep some kind of bullshit balance? You have to do better than that. Commander Shepard would tell you the same thing if he were here,"

"It is unfortunate you cannot see true reason. Your species could have been useful. Be watchful Blaine Grimm, for our next encounter will be your last," Harbinger stated, then closed its appendages back to its body and floated away from me towards the dark horizon. I watched, under the dim light given off by the distant stars and galaxies. Suddenly, I was back in the jungle laying on the ground with Ashley and Liara kneeling over me.

"Are you okay, Grimm?" Ashley asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Lets go,"


	12. Chapter 12: Incursion

_**Ch. 12: Incursion**_

I couldn't help but be a bit shaken by that encounter with Harbinger. He had some way of manipulating my thoughts, my perception of reality. His threats used to ring hollow with me; now, with the fact that the Reapers were on the outskirts of the galaxy, not stopped but delayed, the threat became real enough. It was only a matter of time until shit hit the fan at that point, a short matter of time. We had to move quick and find something that would get Shepard off the hook when the time came. I was a diligent soldier, I felt that I could contribute greatly to the actual fight that was looming with them. Shepard was as well, but he was the face of humanity and the struggle to come; I was merely a ghost, which I had no problem with. It was imperative that he was free and getting the support of the galactic community in preparation for their arrival. I, on the other hand, just wanted to keep doing what I did best: make things happen behind the scenes.

I continued moving through the thick jungle with Ashley and Liara following close behind. We were almost at the edge of the terminator at that point, as I could see the trees ahead illuminated by the light from Rannoch's parent star. I stepped onto a fallen tree and vaulted over it and came to an immediate stop when I spotted a small group of Geth in the distance. I counted about two of them, wishing my damn thermal vision capability was still working so I could scan for any more not in eyesight. Frustrated, I noticed a thermal sensor display built into the helmet and examined it real quick. I immediately threw my hand up to signal to Ashley and Liara to stop moving, as I was able to detect seven more Geth troops obscured by the foliage. I continued scanning the area, only to notice an incredibly large Geth I had not encountered at that point sitting to the right of them. It had four legs and a giant torso, and I could pick up intense energy readings from it. I knew right away that was something we needed to avoid.

I helped Ashley and Liara climb down from the large tree as quietly as possible, then stuck to its side while we began our maneuver around the patrol. We reached the outskirts of the terminator, which was far less distinguishable planet-side due to Rannoch's atmosphere, shortly after avoiding that patrol and began moving into the better-lit area. I focused back on what my normal eyes were seeing, then paused with my group to discuss where to go from there.

"Alright, we've moved about one klick from our landing zone, we should be pretty close now to their pow wow," I remarked, looking at my allies.

"What do we do when we're there? Surely we can't just walk up to them and ask for some evidence of the Reapers," Liara remarked.

"We observe them. No longer than about twenty minutes though. Hopefully they'll slip and give away some kind of evidence,"

"Sergeant, they're definitely going to be superior in numbers. You saw how many ships came down here..." Ashley commented.

"That's why you two will hang back and let me move in to do what needs to be done. If nothing shows up in twenty minutes, we'll hot-tail it back to the ship and get off this planet," I responded. Liara and Ashley both nodded in response. I then continued to lead them forward, up a hill that overlooked a clearing that was up ahead. I usually had no problem scaling steep hills and even cliffs with enormous payloads on my back, but the constant stress from the previous few days was taking its toll on me. My quads felt like they were on fire as I advanced up the hill. After what seemed like an eternity of climbing, we finally reached the top of the hill and took a short breather. As I shook the jitters out of my legs, Ashley and Liara approached what appeared to be a rather scenic oversight. I grunted to myself and jogged over to them. I stopped right next to Ashley and looked down at the scene below in disbelief.

Sitting there, in the middle of a sizable army of Geth troops, was undeniably a Reaper. The sleek, insect-like shape, purplish color, and hideous aura it gave off were completely unique to them. I immediately had flashbacks to the battle in the Pacific. I could see Tech Sergeant Erickson getting torn in half by one of the Reaper husks as she tried to defend her downed Lieutenant, and I would hopelessly try to defend her mangled corpse only to be pushed back by enemy attacks. Captain Tess, the highest ranking Phantom-2 operative on the ground that day, valiantly jumping on a heavy machine gun on one of our downed choppers and going to work on the Husks for as long as he could to protect one of our squads; a husk that resembled a Krogan then grabbed him from behind and forced him onto one of those Reaper spikes, turning him into one of them. One of the Reapers firing a laser, incinerating the legs off Petty Officer Via, leaving him for bait for a group of husks to begin harvesting him. The flashbacks quickly lead to a feeling of dread seeping through my body, which then turned into anger. I dropped my Vindicator and balled my fists up, catching the attention of Liara and Ashley.

"Sergeant, I've already got several images of that Reaper. We need to get the hell out of here now before they realize that they've got intruders," Ashley said.

"Not yet. I'm going to give the Reapers a warning shot. I'm going down there,"

"Are you insane? They will kill you!" Liara exclaimed.

"No, they won't. I know you have fusion grenades on you, both of you give me what you got,"

"Sergeant Grimm, what the hell are you planning on doing? You can't go toe to toe with a Reaper, let alone a Reaper surrounded by probably a hundred Geth. We need to get off this planet and alert..." Ashley said before I cut her off.

"Again, you're following the formula the Reapers expect of us. They think we're too intimidated by them to do anything worth a shit. It's all about a preemptive strike. Even if I don't cause much damage, they'll know that the galaxy does indeed have inhabitants who are not afraid of them and are ready to fight,"

"What do you want us to do?" Liara asked.

"Wait here. But be ready to haul ass back to the ship," I responded as I collected the four fusion grenades Liara was carrying and the four high explosive ones that Ashley had in her possession. I strapped them together and used my old school demolitions training to sync them to explode after I activate one of the high explosive grenades. Setting off one of the high explosive grenades first would turn this cluster in an extremely potent bomb, amplifying the effect of the high explosive ones, each increasing the power of the fusion grenades. When it was all said and done, I had a small nuclear cluster bomb sitting in my hand, capable of wiping out a city block with ease. I then cracked open the high explosive grenade that would serve as the catalyst and rerouted a few of the wires to create a four minute delay in the explosion. I armed myself with just a knife and M-5 pistol, that way I could travel light and move as quickly as possible.

"Are you sure this is going to work?" Liara asked, sounding concerned.

"I'm only guaranteeing that those Geth will be done for. That Reaper, well I think we know how the story goes. This will be the first time anyone has launched a guerilla attack on them, and they don't expect it one bit seeing as they're still in the staging phase of their galactic assault. With any luck, this bomb will at least scuff its armor," I responded casually, slapping the bomb on my side. It was time for my old SEAL training to kick in. Infiltrate and sabotage. Be a ghost. Instill fear in the enemy. Hooyah.

I checked my shields once more, then began my decent down the hill. I would leapfrog between successive trees, waiting behind each momentarily so as to not catch the attention of the Reaper just yet. After I was sure nothing had seen me, I would slide down to the next, nearly faceplanting into the next tree. After about five minutes of engaging in this process, I finally reached the bottom and was ecstatic to be on flat ground again. The large valley I was approaching was beyond the next patch of jungle, which I decided to use to reach my target as stealthily as possible. It was then that I really wished I had the ability to cloak like Kasumi did; that sure would have made this endeavor much easier. But, after all, the only easy day was yesterday...

As I approached the jungle, I could see four Geth shock troopers and one of those larger red ones patrolling. Luckily for me, none of them were watching the area that I approached from. I crouched down and quietly made my way over to behind a bush, close to one of the shock troopers that had just stopped. I couldn't tell if I was detected or not, so I stayed hidden while I observed its actions. The other four Geth continued moving away while this one stayed still, until their view of the lone trooper was obscured by some trees. Seeing the opportunity, I darted out from behind cover and approached the Geth from behind. Just before it began to turn to face me, I grabbed its head with my left hand, drew my knife out with my right, and severed its head clean off. Since it didn't have soft, fleshy skin like another human or Asari, it did make a clinking noise as I disabled it. Expecting the other Geth to return to investigate, I dragged its body behind the bush I was hiding behind before I made my attack. I kept a watchful eye out for a few short moments, but saw no sign of a response.

I then began stalking the rest of the Geth patrol, slowly following them as they continued to move through the jungle. I took notice of some of Rannoch's native animals as I advanced through the thick brush. Strange-looking, bluish-green monkeys flung through the trees in small groups while larger creatures that resembled elephants nurtured some of the plants. I remembered Mari'Sal Nar Tayya explaining how there was no insect life on this planet back when we talked on Ilium, which made that sight make more sense. Shortly after pondering about this, I noticed that another of the shock troopers had fallen behind. Realizing the opportunity to cut the patrol short another member, I immediately beheaded another Geth and hid its body in a bush. I took cover once again, anticipating the patrol noticing that they were short two members. However, they remained oblivious and continued advancing further into the jungle.

They began moving parallel to my destination, however, so I finally stopped following them and decided to move straight towards the Reaper. I climbed over fallen trees, scaled a small cliff, and waded through a mucky swamp until I finally reached a clearing, giving me a direct line of sight with the Reaper. The Geth surrounding it looked to be mobilizing and arming; sentries and troopers were carrying heavy weapons and Reaper spikes onto their ships with the help of flying drones. The Reaper itself was slightly hovering above the ground, its claw-like appendages pulsating.

"Grimm, wait! You need to hear this! We've been tracking the Geth's communications while you've been down there," Liara chimed in through my helmet. I quickly ducked back behind a large downed tree to respond.

"I'm listening, what is it?"

"They are indeed planning an ambush! They're luring in some ships from the Quarian flotilla, claiming to want to start talks of peace,"

"Do you really think the Quarians are dumb enough to fall for that?"

"Well, apparently they are! They're sending a small contingent of ships to begin some pre-negotiations with the Geth, they think they're in contact with the network that Legion is linked to. But when they get here, the Geth will kill them all and hijack their ships. They plan on infiltrating and inflicting massive damage on the Flotilla, all under the direction of this Reaper they call Guardian,"

"Then me killing these Geth just became critical. Hang tight, I'm getting ready to send them to the junkyard," I responded. As I began to stand back up, my entire body vibrated as an intense sonic signal was let out, causing my ears to ring badly, similar to what I experienced after I killed the first Reaper back on Earth in the Pacific. I then heard a soft disembodied voice whisper in my ear "_We know you're here..."_, causing me to jump and quickly do a 360 degree scan of my surroundings. I saw nothing but jungle, but could feel that there was something nearby, ready to attack. Not knowing its proximity, I readied my blade and prepared for battle. I waited cautiously with my knife in my right hand and adrenaline way up, nearly trembling as I awaited my adversary.

Then suddenly, I felt something sharp pierce through my left arm. I turned my head to the left and saw that my arm had been impaled by a small spike right above my humerus. Ignoring the searing pain, I found my attacker staring right at me; it was a human husk. I charged forward and took its head clean off with my blade, and found myself stumbling right into the open, in front of the Reaper. Aware that I only had seconds to make a move before it killed me on the spot, I ripped the spike out of my arm, discovering that it was pretty much a miniature version of the large ones they usually impaled people on. With blood oozing out all over my arm, I grabbed the decapitated husk's head and impaled it with the spike. I then secured the mini-nuke to the spike and launched it at the Reaper's leg that was closest to me like a javelin. Luckily, I managed to put enough force into it that upon impact, it slightly pierced the Reaper's armor and lodged itself in. The behemoth then quickly retracted its legs just a bit and turned its front side to face me, with all the Geth around it turning their attention to me as well.

"Fuck you!" I yelled out and gave it the finger with my right hand, then quickly sprinted back into the jungle with my left arm hanging almost limp at my side. Sure enough, the laser fire began and Geth gunfire erupted behind me. I kept low and used my old football drills to duck and dodge vines and low-hanging vegetation. I eventually stopped briefly to snap a vine and constrict my arm with it to reduce the bleeding, then continued sprinting. I blurred out my surroundings so much that I was almost completely oblivious to the giant Krogan husk that stepped right into my path. Instead of slowing down, I sped up and leaped at my foe. I used all the momentum I gathered from that move to plunge my knife right into the middle of its head, and cut it open straight down the middle as gravity returned me to the ground. Rather than just simply die, the stubborn beast swung its heavy, deformed arm-turned-giant-claw at me in an attempt to take my head clean off. I ducked its attack and plunged the knife into its midsection. Fearing another swipe from its death blade, I dug my feet into the ground and pushed myself enough to spring forward, carrying both myself and the Krogan husk into the air. When we landed, I stomped my blade deeper into its stomach, then used every bit of power in my right arm to cut it clean open, tearing through the Reaper implants and leftover organic material. The catch was, _it was still alive_!

Accepting a temporary stalemate and noticing the multi-species husk horde on the approach, I recovered my knife and resumed my evening jog. My left arm had gone numb at that point, but I had more to worry about in regard to the Reaper and Geth-husk army that was after me. More and more, I felt like I was plunged back into that hellish battle in the Pacific. I found myself being chased down a number of times by Reaper troops. The worst part was, all I could do was run until I gained some sort of tactical advantage to open fire thanks to the landscape. This time, I had no plan of opening fire; I just needed to get the hell out of there. I was really hoping that Liara and Ashley were ready for this onslaught. As I finally reached the clearing on the side of the jungle I infiltrated from, I figured I had about a minute and a half to spare. I looked up the giant hill for my two squadmates, but saw no one. _They must have been detected by the _Geth, I thought to myself. Panicked, I quickly looked around for where else they could have gone, but saw nowhere. The only viable option for them was back to the shuttle. Without me.

I nearly tumbled over myself as I sprinted into the open, between the jungle and the large hill. I couldn't sprint up that hill before the enemy force got to me. Running parallel to the jungle would only delay the inevitable, and running back in had suicide written all over it. It was game over. I pulled out my pistol, prepared for the worst. I pointed it at the jungle, waiting for the stampede to arrive. Although the footsteps got louder, another much more welcome noise overpowered it: Ashley and Liara's ship flying directly overhead.

"Grimm! Grab on! NOW!" I heard Ashley's voice yell out as she dropped a rope from the side of the ship. Without any further hesitation, I grabbed onto it and we lifted off. I lost all feeling in my left arm and could only hold on with my right as we began our ascent towards the edge of Rannoch's atmosphere. I looked down, watching the Reaper search for me in what was clearly frustration. Then came the boom. It started off as a small spark on the Reaper's leg, then quickly evolved into a monstrous explosion worthy of an action movie. The blue light it emitted was so intense that it had the same effect as a flashbang on my eyes. When I regained my normal eyesight, I could see bodies strewn everywhere and a giant circular area of the jungle decimated. The only thing moving was the Reaper, and even it was slow to recover from the blast as it suffered some obvious structural damage. Ashley then lifted me back up into the ship while Liara piloted it.

Ashley helped me over to one of the seats behind Liara and applied some medigel to me. The bleeding did stop, but I quickly took note of the implants that apparently intruded my arm thanks to that Reaper spike. I could tell by the look on Ashley's face that she noticed it too.

"Shit! Liara put the ship on autopilot, come look at this," Ashley said. She did as she was asked and approached me, covering her mouth to suppress a gasp when she saw my arm.

"Grimm... you're... you're implanted," she commented.

"Yeah, thanks for reminding me," I responded with a grunt as I swung my arm onto my lap.

"Who would know how to fix him? We can't let him become indoctrinated, or worse, become one of those damn husks," Ashley said.

"We need to get him back to the Normandy. Perhaps Mordin can help him, if not, Shepard may possibly know someone," Liara responded, with the uncertainty in her voice clear as day.

"Look, if you can't help me, or if I start turning into a fucking husk, do everyone a favor and shoot me,"

"Don't talk like that, we're going to find some way to get you back to normal," Ashley responded. I just nodded my head and leaned my head back against the headrest, taking in the tranquility of the flight.

"So we got that evidence of the Reapers?" I asked.

"Damn right we do. No one can deny these pictures at all,"

"So what's the Alliance's current stance on the Reapers?" I asked, noticing Ashley being somewhat hesitant to answer.

"Officially, they don't exist. They're a hoax. Unofficially, the top brass at Arcturus knows about them and has been working on some kind of countermeasure thanks to pieces of Sovereign that were found after the attack on the Citadel. Everyone is hush-hush about it. Admiral Hackett thinks they may have developed some kind of weapon to combat the Reapers, but it's still not ready to be tested,"

"Well it sounds like they're behind then. They've got a very short window of opportunity left to make it happen. Is this what's being hidden from the Council?"

"Yes, but I'm not entirely sure why. It seems like they want to keep this kind of weaponry and technology from falling into any other species' hands,"

"Makes sense. It's a trump card for after the Reapers,"

"Yeah but this is exactly what makes the Council and galactic community still not entirely trusting of humanity,"

"True, but maybe they just don't want their research to be interfered with until it's actually ready to use,"

"Sergeant, either way it's not ideal for relations. We've even had reports of a joint Turian-Batarian strike force out looking for the greybox of a dead thief who gathered information on the project," Ashley responded. Kasumi was in possession of that! I decided to keep that information from her, however.

"Are the Quarians still sending those ships out here?"

"No, I sent them a message warning them of the trap as soon as we got back on this ship," Liara said.

"Good," I responded. I already neutralized part of the threat anyways.

I told Ashley and Liara that I did not feel like talking any more and clutched my left arm with my right as we continued to travel to our next destination. I used my right hand to feel the implants in my left arm, taking note of the strange, reddish wires and glowing circular pieces. At least that husk was too stupid to impale the rest of my body, or I definitely would have been a goner. After I finished feeling around, I put my right arm on the armrest and stared out the porthole into space, staring at the purple color of the Veil as we neared its edge.


	13. Chapter 13:  Rebirth

_**Ch. 13: Rebirth**_

We finally emerged from the Perseus Veil and underwent a transfer through a series of mass relays until we once again reached Council Space. While we were en route, I lost nearly all sensation in my left arm; it felt like it was being taken over by the Reaper implants. I kept checking out the strange glowing parts as they seemed to meld with my bones and skin. Ashley took over piloting the ship while Liara monitored my arm and chatted with me. She was incredibly worried about the fact that I was partially Reaper-ized, but I didn't pay it too much mind. The wound was worth the minor setback I dealt that Reaper on Rannoch, considering I stopped a preemptive strike on the Flotilla that would have falsely made all of the Geth seem like the aggressors. As long as someone stopped it from taking over my whole body, I was fine with it being there.

I was more concerned with the fact that the Reapers were already beginning to reach systems on the outskirts of the galaxy. We were concerned about that Reaper on Rannoch following us to the nearest relay outside of the veil, but Ashley never picked up any massive energy signals heading our way. She said all signs were pointing to the Reaper having remained in the Veil. For everyone's sake I hoped she was right. I wondered if that mini-nuke I created had damaged it to the point where it was forced to stay planet-side; if that was the case, then I had just increased my tally of victimized Reapers to five. Out of hundreds. Or thousands. Or worse.

We eventually linked back up with the Normandy. Only about three hours had passed since the incursion on Rannoch, but it felt much longer than that. I lost just about all control of my left arm, and it hung nearly limp on my side. I was rushed to the medical bay, where Doctor Chakwas, Mordin, Legion, and a couple of other newer doctors from the medical staff joined forces to examine my arm and determine what to do while I lay on the operating table. They eventually consulted EDI for ideas, and Thompson showed up to help as well. The Reaper machinery had self-replicated and began taking my body over rather slowly, but had not gotten past my arm yet. I knew right away what the plan had become. My arm was going to have to go, lest I be converted into one of those mindless Husk maniacs.

Commander Shepard, alongside his most trusted comrades Garrus, Tali, Liara, and a wary Ashley Williams, watched from the other side of the glass as the diagnosis was made. Still reeling from his previous mission in the now-extinct Bahak system, the grim look on Shepard's face was more than obvious. He had just dealt with sacrificing over three hundred thousand innocent lives to delay the inevitable; the truth was, the Reapers' return was even closer than he thought. They were in the galaxy, just searching for the next available mass relay to begin their invasion. His already hollow expression became that much more empty. Garrus and Tali shook their heads. Thompson grabbed my left mechanized hand with his and gripped it. As calmly and nonchalant as ever, I accepted the fact that my left arm was going to be gone. I simply nodded at Doctor Chakwas with a smile as everyone, including EDI, went silent when the call was made.

"Wait! New idea, probability of success very high," Mordin exclaimed, prompting everyone to turn to him. Legion particularly took interest in what he had to say.

"Use arm to reverse engineer technology. Break apart and learn from, possibly uncover key to Husk-transformation," he continued, failing to address the dilemma of my arm no longer being attached to my torso.

"So uh, that means what for me?"

"Arm will be gone, but technology can be used to help in war effort,"

"Right, so I'm still without an arm. I can't help that much in the war effort then," I said and all was silent again.

"Blaine, come talk with me before anything else is done," Thompson said to break the silence. I jumped off the table and walked out of the medical bay with him. Eager to find out what he had to say, I wasted no time breaking the silence as Commander Shepard and the most trusted crew joined us.

"You should know that Phantom-2 is still fully operational, Blaine. They have been shadowing Cerberus, keeping tabs on them ever since The Illusive Man created the organization. General Adkins didn't quite fill you in completely..." Thompson began.

"So what's going on? There has to be some reason you're telling me this," I responded.

"Arcturus station, the Alliance Navy's headquarters, is actually where a small cell under direct command of General Adkins is located. Their science team has made significant advances in cyborg technology, fusing man and machine to create the ultimate fighting weapons. A soldier that has human instincts and acute awareness but never tires, has better than perfect vision, strength unobtainable by any human, speed and agility previously unimagined, and can withstand more punishment than any normal organic, is one that can give any Reaper a true fight,"

"That's pretty much how I was brought back, part normal with most of my humanity in tact," Shepard commented.

"Yes, the Lazarus project. Phantom-2 studied it intensively as they progressed with you. They made giant improvements and simply jumped their own version of the project forward at least fifty years..."

"But how? The Lazarus project was one of a kind," Shepard responded.

"Phantom-2 used technology scavenged from Sovereign, as well as captured Geth and intense A.I. Experimentation. Alongside a covert unit from the Turian hierarchy, humans and Turians have been developing the technology to create the perfect soldiers. Human and Turian cyborgs that retain their conscious identities but are physically and mentally superior in every way to any species' most elite troops,"

"So again, what's the point Thompson?" I asked, already knowing where this was going. As foreboding as the conversation was, I retained my cool and hoped for the emergence of another option.

"Those Reaper implants are going to take over your body, Blaine. The cyborg program was built using exactly what's already in you. The only way to preserve you as you are is to get you to Arcturus and get you into the program,"

"That's insane, I have never heard of my people working on anything like this before," Garrus commented.

"There's no way you could have known, none at all Garrus. Phantom-2 already has thirty-two cyborg agents, ten Turians and the rest humans, all on the fringes of the galaxy looking for any signs of the Reapers,"

"Thompson, we encountered a Reaper on Rannoch. I hit it with a small nuke when its shields were down though, it's likely the thing couldn't make it back off the planet. They're in the galaxy already, and had I not stopped or slowed down that one we would probably all be dead already," I said.

"I'm sure they already knew about that one, I know one agent was in the Perseus Veil conducting reconnaissance. If you didn't finish off that Reaper Blaine, I'm sure he did,"

"Oh Keelah... they're already on my people's homeworld..." Tali said.

"Tali we need to alert the Migrant Fleet about this incident. They need to know," Liara said.

"You're right, I need to get to the Migrant Fleet as soon as possible and tell them about this,"

"Blaine, we need to get you to Arcturus. It's the only way we can save you and keep you as a fighting force," Thompson said with finality. I stood there, attempting to cross my arms but only for my right arm to cross my chest and clutch my left shoulder. My left arm still hung limp. I was drained, just incredibly tired. My thoughts, which were just in a frenzy of unrelated randomness, assumed a calm and smooth rhythm. I could think clearly, the trembling I was experiencing throughout my body taking a rest. I had entered some kind of state of euphoria, a high sensation where I could properly analyze what was going on. In my state of mental surrealism, I finally responded.

"Alright, lets go,"

As if on cue, Commander Shepard got a call from Alliance Command, giving him a date and time for his trial on Earth. In two months, he was going to face the music. The irony of that whole situation just disgusted me. How many times had he put his life on the line? Not just for humanity, but for the galaxy? And what does he get in return? He was a damn hero. The loss of the star system was unfortunate, but it needed to be done. At least, that's what I thought. Maybe it didn't make much a difference in the end, considering the rest of the galactic community still shrugged their shoulders at the incoming Reaper invasions. We were just going to be caught off guard anyway...

A private vessel apparently funded by an "Advanced Ecosystems Corps" met up with the Normandy, at some distance between the familiar-yet-distant solar system I grew up in and the massive Citadel, which weren't too far from each other in galactic terms. As soon as the bay door opened to the private ship, I could tell immediately it was Phantom-2 operatives who were taking us on board and that ridiculous logo was just a cover. The mannerism and intensity of the guys, even the looks of their uniforms and weapons gave it away. Then, just like that, I was back in the hands of my former unit and leaving the Normandy behind. Who knew how long that departure was going to be. I enjoyed working with the Normandy team, even though my time with them was mostly spent in combat with Geth, Collectors, and Cerberus troops. I remembered the promise I gave to Tali and Mari, how I would help resolve their conflict with the Geth. I refused to let that promise go unanswered. I just needed some time.

The flight to Arcturus was relatively short. A medical officer and one of the cyborg project's top scientists were aboard and monitoring my arm during the flight, injecting it with numerous solutions and constantly taking vital signs. They used some strange machinery to repulse the spread of the Reaper implants from further invading my body. I could begin to feel the signals given off by the Reapers from across the galaxy, giving instructions to their technology. Trying to take control of me. But my nervous system had not yet been assimilated, nor had my brain. These hideous demons knew they had me in their grasp, and they were doing their damnedest to complete their harvest of me. The Phantom-2 science team appeared to be one step ahead of them though. They could hold the Reapers' influence at bay and didn't seem to have too much trouble doing so.

Upon arriving at the large space station, we docked and unloaded. Thompson and I were escorted by the medical officer and scientist, as well as a small security detail. Their orders were to take me out immediately should I fall under Reaper control. I was rushed past the primary security front and moved back through a series of hallways. After a little bit more jogging, I collapsed as the Reaper tech began draining energy from the rest of my body to feed the arm they had seized. Thompson picked me up over his shoulder while the scientist and medical officer continued to hit my arm with electromagnetic pulses to ward off the Reaper signals. My vision went haywire as I began seeing all kinds of different shades of red and green and felt like I was in a dream sequence. I couldn't let myself fall asleep though; I had to retain consciousness and maintain as much control as possible. I was stuck in a mental battle with the Reapers as we finally reached the operating room I would be worked on. I was placed on top of a table as I lost the mental battle and fell unconscious.

I had strange, twisted visions. Cerberus working with the enemy, the full Reaper fleet landing on Earth, the Turian home-planet Palaven coming under attack as well. I had a vision of me standing in front of Harbinger in person at some location, fully armed and preparing to go toe to toe with the bastard, surrounded by the dead of both sides of the conflict. Shepard and crew flying the Normandy into battle alongside an armada of warships from the various races. Rescuing Mari and the rest of the Quarian royalty from a surprise Reaper assault on the Fleet. It all seemed to last for an eternity; an endless inescapable dream possibly telling me where the coming war was going to take me, and how it may play out.

Maybe it was just part of my struggle against the Reapers while I was knocked out. The only sensation I could truly experience was the influence they were continuing to exert on my body. In my state of unconsciousness, I continued to resist. I could begin to hear voices, many of them, a legion. They gradually subsided until just one remained in contact with me, that of Harbinger. _You are not yourself any more, Blaine Grimm. You belong to us._ I argued back, telling it that I would only belong to them as a corpse, nothing more. The exchange was brief and became rather distorted. Harbinger's voice became difficult to understand and dwindled to nothing more than a monotonous buzzing sound.

I finally woke up from my Reaper-induced sleep. The awakening was painful and took much coordination, just like when I woke up from cryo. I slowly opened my eyes to immediately notice some sort of HUD implanted into my vision; it allowed me to discern between organic and mechanical heat sources and identified materials around the room I was in. Taking interest in this new ability, I discovered it returned my ability to see in both night and electromagnetic pulse visions. Everything in view was incredibly crisp, and when I focused on something every possible physical detail about it lined up on the side of my left eye.

Then came the craziest part. I lifted my arms, which were both attached to tubes and monitoring equipment, into eyesight and noticed my left arm was almost entirely machine with a few traces of flesh here and there while my right arm was more or less the same. I could tell from the moment I lifted them that they were both incredibly stronger than they were beforehand. A dock was built in to my left forearm. I brought it to my face and noticed the display on it. After some more observation, I realized it was the kind of technology used to call in orbital strikes, command and monitor fellow troops, and direct tactical nukes and other air runs. A slit at the edge of the dock confused me. I checked it out until I noticed a small button on the outside of my mechanical left hand. Curious, I pressed it and a twelve inch metal blade surrounded by some kind of blue aura ejected out of the slit. I then retracted the dangerous-looking blade. The blackish-blue color of the mechanical parts intrigued me.

So far I was digging these improvements the cyborg program gave me. It may have stripped me of who I once was but I truthfully was expecting it to come down to the wire in the approaching war with the Reapers. I didn't know whether I would survive or die, so what better way than to go into battle in style as an organic nightmare for them?

I sat up, noticing Thompson leaning against a wall on the other side of the room. Two project scientists came over to my side to begin monitoring my awakening and doing the usual check ups. I used my advanced vision to take note that one of the scientists was part machine as well; he must have previously gone through the cyborg project. They checked their PDA's and took some readings from the machines, then began disconnecting me from the tubes and wires, apparently pleased with the results.

"I am Doctor Wattz, how are you feeling?" the semi-cyborg scientist asked.

"I feel great, completely rejuvenated," I responded.

"Good. The project went without a hitch. We were able to disrupt the communication between the Reapers and their technology that your left arm was implanted with, so there is no danger of it sparking back up. The implants were incredibly fresh, undead and Reaper-responsive. So instead of removing them, we used them to develop your body even better than we could normally do. Your power and abilities are unmatched by any other living organic life form out there,"

"I can tell I'm stronger, I see quite literally what you did to my eyes, what else did you guys do?"

"We ran a program through your brain while you were in a medical coma. We introduced some biotic abilities to your arsenal," he responded. Before I decided to ask more, I remembered Liara telling me back on Ilium about how biotic powers worked, how the mind has to focus dark energy or something like that. I saw Liara create a biotic field around a group of Cerberus mercenaries before, and while I was thinking about it I felt some kind of strange sensation in my head. Before I knew it, I had the scientist I was speaking to immobile and surrounded by a blue aura. I let it go as quickly as I could.

"Damn I'm sorry, I was just thinking about it," I commented, trying to hide a grin on my face.

"It's alright, we made your biotic potential incredibly sensitive to your thoughts. It shouldn't take much for you to activate any of your abilities. Your biotic talent is limited, however. You can create these fields, barriers to protect yourself, and for a lack of better terms, 'telekinetic' abilities to move and slam objects. Your mind isn't the type for more advanced abilities such as singularities and stasis fields. But what you have, you can do better than most natural adepts and vanguards," he responded. I liked where this was going.

Just wearing a pair of boxers, I stood up from the bed and stretched my arms out. I then thought about the idea of a barrier surrounding me, felt that weird sensation in my head again, then I was surrounded by a blue aura. I smiled then released my focus, amazed at how sensitive my new biotic abilities were to the tiny bit of concentration I would put in. Thompson then brought me a fresh new set of combat gear. The sharp, thin, navy blue stripes that weaved throughout the otherwise all-black attire seemed more for show than for combat. That was until I slipped myself into it, and it felt like it latched onto my skin and melded with my body.

"Sergeant Grimm, these are the new combat suits that Phantom-2 wears. It monitors and helps regulate your bodily functions when under stress and is virtually impenetrable," Dr. Wattz told me. I felt even more muscle bound than I already was wearing it, and just ready for anything that came my way. Thompson then handed me a black boonie hat and some monocular eyepiece.

"This eyepiece will turn any weapon you have, scope or no scope, into a precision weapon," Thompson said as he handed me my gifts. I tucked the hat away for the time being and strapped the eyepiece gear to my head, but kept it off my eye. I slipped on a black pair of boots with an old-school appearance to them and grabbed some combat gloves off the table that was next to me.

"I'm ready for war. Send me back out to the edges of the galaxy, let me find the Reapers," I said, feeling better than I ever had in my life.

"Not quite yet. You look good and everything seems to have gone over smoothly with you, but there's more debriefing to be done. General Adkins would like to meet with you and some higher-ups from the Turian Hierarchy's commando unit," Dr. Wattz said.

"Roger that," I responded, and walked with Thompson out the doorway. I brushed my head to feel it had been shaven into a perfect high and tight, much to my pleasure.

"Blaine, you should know that you have been out for about fifty-eight days and twenty-three hours," Thompson commented as we walked down the grayish, almost silver hallway.

"What? It took that damn long to fix me up?"

"Most of the time was spent fighting off the Reaper influence. They barely managed to stop you from becoming a husk,"

"So you're telling me Commander Shepard is going on trial tomorrow?"

"Yes. General Adkins and Admiral Hackett both wanted you ready by the trial at the latest. Should Shepard be sentenced to prison, they are going to turn to you while they work on getting him out,"

"Where's the rest of the Normandy crew?"

"The Normandy got reclaimed by the Alliance a few days ago and is grounded now, so just about everyone departed. Ashley Williams and Joker went with him to Earth. Tali went back to the Migrant Fleet with Legion. Mordin Solus returned to Sur Kesh and Garrus returned to Palaven. Liara T'Soni returned to her base, and I believe Grunt returned to Tuchanka. I don't know where everyone else went," he explained to me as I brushed past numerous Phantom-2 guards and Turian commandos. The whole team was split up again, and I could not figure out if it was good or not. Tali and Legion could work on possibly fixing Quarian and Geth relations, but other than that I was not sure what good could come from the split up.

"So it's been just about two months now, the Reapers can be here any time. What part of that does the Alliance not get?"

"Blaine, the Alliance still dismisses the idea of a full-on Reaper invasion. No one wants to believe it," he responded, angering me. I stopped walking and slammed my fist into the metal wall next to me, putting a giant dent into it.

"Are you kidding me? This threat is fucking real! And they're still going to ignore it?" I yelled, startling Thompson and a couple of Turians standing across from us.

"Calm down Blaine, that's their official stance. Humanity is not completely ignorant to the biggest threat to our species' existence in history. Alongside a splinter Turian commando group, they secretly fund us under the table to work with what they recovered from Sovereign's remains to learn the Reapers' weaknesses and to develop weapons capable of fighting them,"

"That's a lot of resources they manage to keep hidden,"

"Political shit Blaine, that's all it is,"

"So what are the weapons they have developed?"

"You," he said. It was then that I realized they weren't planning on developing some huge weapon to combat them. All the Reapers had to do was target such a weapon and take it out, so it made sense to pour resources into a highly mobile unit capable of bringing the fight to them, eluding them, and living to fight another day.

I stayed quiet the rest of the walk. We passed through an observatory and by a particle accelerator cannon defense system while on our way to meet with the brass. I looked outside and took note of the ships from the Fifth Fleet docked at the station. Thompson led me through the doorway to the meeting place. It was a small, dark, almost cold room with a galaxy map as the middle table with chairs surrounding it. Star charts were posted along the walls in every direction, with holographic pins sticking out in many different locations. My guess was that those were the locations of operatives throughout the galaxy. As we took a few more steps in, General Adkins and a Turian military officer came up to greet us.

"Sergeant Grimm, didn't think we'd be meeting again so quick. This is Commander Ber'Kik of the Turian Hierarchy military," he said to me as we shook hands. I turned to Commander Ber'Kik and shook his hand with a firm look on my face, observing the black and red facial tattoo resembling his home colony.

"Pleased to meet you Sergeant Grimm. I've heard many things about you. You have quite the reputation," Ber'Kik commented as we shook hands.

"Pleased to meet you too Commander. And that's a good reputation you're talking about, right?" I responded with a grin.

"A reputation to kick major ass, I'd say that's a good one to have. Especially in the business you're in," he responded.

"Sergeant, I'm going to be frank with you. Two of our operatives have been tracking the Reaper fleet. They can't get an accurate number, but it's absolutely enormous. You know it's bad when the only estimate you can get on the size of an enemy force is in terms of at least hundreds, maybe even thousands of kilometers in length of the area they span," General Adkins grimly remarked.

"Roger that sir. I think it's time to call all alarms, everyone needs to be on full alert,"

"Agreed, but the brass here at Arcturus needs proof that the invasion is imminent before they initiate Code Red defense protocols. The Reapers are on approach to another relay, according to our intel. They should be arriving at this relay in another nine to ten days, if they maintain their current pace. They seemed to have slowed down over the past few days. I'm guessing they figured out they were being tracked and are trying to throw us off now or catch them off guard. I just pulled the two operatives from the mission moments ago, giving them an abort order,"

"So you need me to finish the job,"

"Yes. The system they are approaching is a pretty barren system, just a few private mining colonies exist there. We need you to enter the system via mass relay, confirm the Reapers' arrival, then get the hell out of dodge,"

"That sounds too much like what Commander Shepard tried to do. The Reapers will be right on my tail then,"

"We will deactivate all relays leading to this one the moment you come through. It will go against Council Space regulations, but this is probably the only way we can convince the Galactic community of the coming war. Get that definitive evidence, preferably recorded visual, and get back here. We can still buy enough time then to prepare as best as we can,"

"So you want me to get up close and personal with them again,"

"You're the only man I would trust with this mission, Grimm. Perhaps Shepard, but we all know the shit hole he is currently in," General Adkins continued.

"Sergeant Grimm, I hope you're ready for what is about to come. The galaxy is unknowingly relying on you to-" Commander Ber'Kik said but was cut off as a loudspeaker came on in the room.

"Commander Ber'Kik... this is Tech Sergeant Larnier and Lieutenant Deems from Bravo team... We have been compromised..." the voice on the other end said.

"Team this is Ber'Kik, what is going on?"

"The Reaper fleet caught us and deployed these robotic orbs to destroy our vessel... We've been spaced... The lieutenant is dead... I don't have much time left,"

"I'm sending someone to pick you up right now,"

"Negative sir, not much time until they decide to finish me off... Listen, they veered off course, now on a trajectory straight for Arcturus and the relay to Earth... It won't be long until they arrive... I... I..." the soldier said as we listened to the painful gasps and desperate attempts to take in air as his supply ran dry.

"Full alert, your mission is aborted Sergeant. The plan has changed," General Adkins said with the most serious look on his face I had ever seen.

At that same instant, it seemed as if the entire station shook. A loud noise, similar to a massive concussive blast rocked the station as alerts of hull breaches became audible by the station's VI. Thompson immediately broke open a door leading to a small weapons cache in the corner of the room. The four of us dashed over and we began arming ourselves. The next broadcast over the station's loudspeakers said _"Armed intruders on board. All personnel respond to Code Blue. Code Blue."_ I grabbed an upgraded Mattock assault rifle from the small stash, as well as an upgraded M-5 Pistol labeled only as an _EM-5 Phalanx Repeater_. Next I picked up a shotgun, also upgraded and labeled as an _EM-29 Scimitar._ Interestingly enough, each upgraded weapon was black, and I had no clue at the time what the upgrades were. I attached the shotgun on the small of my back, the pistol on my hip, and the assault rifle on my back. I then lowered the monocular over my left eye.

I looked back at my fellow soldiers and saw that everyone was armed to the teeth. That's when I started wondering who was attacking us. The Reapers were nowhere near small enough to fit in the station, so I ruled their arrival out; it didn't work out time-wise anyway. I could not figure out any reasonable source of the infiltration of Arcturus. Instead of continuing to think, I stepped outside the doorway to see a breach in the hull a few meters away. Something immediately told me to take a step back. I did, and narrowly avoided having my throat cut open as a result. Some female assassin, dressed in some grayish armor with a strange helmet that had four eye slits, missed my throat with a sword by a mere few inches. I instinctively responded by throwing my right fist at her head and connected, knocking her to the ground and separating the blade from her hand. Thompson ran to my side, then out to her.

Before I could react, Thompson was shot down by a barrage of gunfire from the other end of the hallway. At least three assault rifles went off as they ripped through his flesh, leaving him a bloody mess on the floor. Shocked, the General and Commander stepped back behind the galaxy map to take cover, anticipating the hostiles to enter the room. I was instantly enraged. I had a short flashback to our battle with the Reapers on Earth, then back to our reuniting on the Citadel. Now he was dead. For real this time.

The gunfire continued on the doorway from across the hall, which gave the assassin in front of me enough time to grab her sword and escape. As soon as a lull in the gunfire came, I pulled the Mattock out and dashed into the hallway. The cyborg program enhanced my awareness and targeting efficiency; in less than a second, I found and identified my targets and had their helmets in the sight of my weapon. In less than a second later, I killed all three targets with surgical rounds to their heads from the Mattock. I turned back to Thompson, hoping there was some way he would still be alive. My head dropped as I discovered that it was simply false hope. General Adkins and Commander Ber'Kik ran over to the troops I killed and quickly examined their bodies. They then turned to me.

"Cerberus,"


	14. Chapter 14:  Invasion

_**Ch. 14: The Invasion**_

I could not fathom any plausible reason for Cerberus, the pro-human organization, to launch an attack on the home of the Alliance Navy. The situation presented me no opportunity to sit down and think about it, however. The constant waling of the station alarm and repeated warnings given by the VI momentarily scrambled my thoughts. Thompson's dead body was sprawled on the ground in front of me, full of holes and still oozing out blood. The sound of gunfire echoed throughout the hallway as my upgraded hearing allowed me to isolate and detect individual voices of Cerberus troops, some giving commands to others not far away. General Adkins and Commander Ber'Kik then ran over to me.

"Grimm, I'm sorry about Thompson. He was a good soldier," General Adkins said.

"A great one. It won't matter if I don't fight these bastards off the station," I responded, getting straight to business.

"Grimm, there's something odd about these Cerberus troops,"

"What do you mean?"

"I looked at their bullet wounds and could see their flesh. They have mechanical augmentations..."

"Are you telling me they're cyborgs?"

"No, they're very much human, just upgraded in some way. It doesn't look like Reaper technology, but it also doesn't look like anything we used to fix you or what was used to fix Shepard. There's something off about them,"

"Regardless, they're attacking us sir. We can try to capture one later and interrogate them. For now, I will kill any that get in our way,"

"Glad to hear your emotional side hasn't changed, Grimm. We need to link up with the nearest operational combat unit, it's a Turian patrol that's pinned down in that hallway," he said back.

"Roger that. You two are my priority. I need to get you guys off the station, I will stay here and fight these Cerberus forces,"

"No Grimm. We need to work together to defeat them. They're highly trained, even you can't take them on alone,"

"With all due respect, sir, Phantom-2 needs you to continue successfully operating. The Turians need you as well, Commander, to continue doing what you do,"

"Grimm we are not leaving the station while it's under attack! Get that in your damn head,"

"You need to stand down sir! What good is anything you worked for if you're dead?" I sharply responded, bringing about an awkward silence. I had no history of being disobedient or not listening to my superiors. This situation was simply more complicated than anything before though. As I was getting ready to soldier up and apologize to the general and fall back in line, an incredibly deep, ominous bass-like sound permeated the station. The floor vibrated beneath me as the bass crept through my body, shaking every bone and nerve and rattling my noggin. The acoustic shockwave temporarily disoriented me, forcing me to clutch my head. The sensation was oddly familiar. I ran over to the nearest porthole a few paces down the hallway and glared out into the cosmos. _There's just no fucking way the Reapers are here already_ I reminded myself as I scanned the space. Moments after I thought that, my worst fear became a reality.

A Reaper ship dropped out of FTL speeds and materialized several kilometers away from the station. I watched in horror as several more popped up moments later. Then, like an exponential growth spurt, an entire fleet arrived. The Reapers were here. The war for the survival of the galaxy had begun. And Arcturus was their first objective – a smart tactical move considering it was the heart of the Alliance Navy. Much to my relief, however, it looked like a majority of the fleet had been pulled away while I was being worked on. Only a few warships stood between the Reapers and Arcturus. Between the momentary tranquility and the all-out war.

The Reapers spared no time in their approach, and quickly closed in on Arcturus. I watched as they approached, just stunned by their numbers. I never expected them to have such a large force – where did the resources come from to build that fleet? And who had the time and manpower to build them? The station's defense turrets and few remaining warships then came alive and began unleashing a barrage of fire on the leading Reaper. I wasted no time waiting to see the inevitable outcome of that skirmish. The Reapers I fought on Earth and Rannoch were relatively small, somewhere between five hundred to seven hundred meters in length. The lead Reaper at the moment was easily around two kilometers in size, vastly dwarfing the ones I fought before. Those smaller ones already took an incredible amount of firepower to bring down. These bigger ones were definitely much stronger.

"And so it begins," General Adkins morosely stated.

I grabbed General Adkins by his sleeve and pulled him towards me. Weapon at the ready, I motioned to him and Commander Ber'Kik to follow me. I moved at a fast pace, weaving in and around corners as I led the two officers through the treacherous hallway and nearly leaving them behind a couple of times. From what I could tell, the mass relay was still active but the Reapers had apparently halted their advance. I told the General and Commander to take cover behind a wall as we approached another large window glaring out into space. I crept up to the window to glare outside, and quickly ducked beneath the opening when I saw the red "eye" of a Reaper peering in the window. The massive beast scanned the hallway, apparently looking for any signs of life while I stayed on the ground, protected only by the visual cover of the shadows in the hallway. It let out another massive bass-boom that nearly shattered the window, temporarily throwing my equilibrium off once again.

I heard footsteps to my left and quickly turned my head to see four Cerberus assault troopers on the approach with weapons drawn. My first thought was that Cerberus knew the Reapers were incoming, maybe from messing around with the Collector base technology and that the Illusive Man had deployed forces to Arcturus to combat them on their arrival. I was hoping that they were under orders to kill everyone on sight, not taking chances with anyone possibly being indoctrinated. The more I thought about it however, the less sense it made. These Cerberus soldiers, who were clearly much better trained and deadlier than the mercenaries I fought on the Collector station, would be effective against the husks and other Reaper abominations. They would not be effective against the massive starships themselves though, and they clearly were not there to help evacuate. My thought processes flew by, and in a matter of two seconds I thought about the situation, analyzed it, and came up with a conclusion thanks to the Cyborg program enhancements. Cerberus was working with the Reapers, for whatever reason. The four assault troopers trained their weapons on me and got ready to fire.

I quickly surrounded them in a blue biotic field and slammed all four them hard against a wall. I attempted to focus on hitting them again with another biotic throw, but I was mentally weakened from delivering the initial blow. A quick barrage of fire from my Mattock ended the four of them as they tried to get up to defend themselves. As I expected, the skirmish attracted the attention of the Reaper that was glaring in the window as it let out another massive blast of bass. I peeked out the window and watched as the Reaper moved away from it then moved up and began hovering directly above the station. I could not figure out what it was trying to do as I kept my eyes on the rest of the Reaper fleet hovering in the distance, seemingly waiting for this lead one to finish examining this part of the station. It made its intentions clear, however, when it slammed one of its enormous claw-like appendages through the ceiling directly in front of me. I gazed up as the Reaper retracted its claw and the station's emergency hull breach protocol kicked in, creating a kinetic barrier to hold the oxygen in the station.

I looked behind me to give General Adkins and Commander Ber'Kik directions to retreat down the hallway, but they were not there. Puzzled and concerned, I turned back around just in time to observe Reaper troops fall through the barrier into the station. These were the same creatures I fought back on earth. Biomechanical, eight-foot tall, azure-skinned, red-eyed beasts with an evil aura that permeated the air around them. The long skeletal plating protruding directly up from their foreheads was indicative of their Reaper origin. The memories of that battle on Earth flooded my mind as I had not seen these foes since.

Four of them landed in front me, and I wasted no time opening fire on them with my Mattock. They were just as intelligent and agile as I remembered them to be as they quickly dispersed as soon as I opened fire, attempting to distract me with multiple targets. Rather than let them gain the tactical advantage, I took off down the hallway behind me, sensing the ever-watchful eye of the Reaper ships outside tracking me down. I sprinted as fast as I could, backtracking all the way to the conference room where I had talked to Adkins and Ber'Kik just minutes before. I saw no sign of them as I reached the room and ran into a standing Thompson corpse. Shocked, I was about to say something as I noticed the obvious workings of Reaper technology on him. Something had upgraded his body to reanimate it and brainwashed him while I was gone.

"Blaine Grimm..." he muttered.

"You're not Thompson..." I grumbled back, aiming the Mattock directly at his forehead.

"I told you we were coming, and that your species' downfall was inevitable," he responded. I clearly recognized Harbinger's voice and tone tearing through Thompson's vocal cords.

"Never said I didn't believe you were coming," I responded and shot him through the head, sending a gory mess all over the wall behind him. The Reaper-ized Thompson slumped over and fell to the ground. Another massive bass blast rocked the station as I continued to sprint down the hallway, keeping on the alert for any signs of General Adkins and Commander Ber'Kik. I did not want to just leave Thompson's body laying on the ground exposed to the enemy, but he had the Reaper implants. I had no idea if they could spring back to life and reanimate him yet another time. I left him behind as I continued running through the station, looking for the two officers.

I threw the Mattock over my back as I approached a weapons bay. I took cover behind one of the open bay doors and looked inside to find at least twenty Cerberus troopers, some holding what looked like riot shields, and several Reaper shock troops looking around the bay. I could hear the other shock troops approaching from behind, so I had no choice but to enter the bay with stealth. I ducked down and crept around the left bay door and dove behind a crate. Just as I regained my composure from the dive, the four shock troops that were in pursuit of me entered, followed by five Turians; they must have been indoctrinated while fighting this evil force. Keeping absolutely quiet, I worked my way around multiple obstacles and weaved in and around crates full of weapons. Luckily for me, the entire bay was very dimly-lit, accentuating the irony of the situation.

I climbed up a ladder and on top of a fighter craft then took a prone position. I peeked over the edge of the machine and observed the hostile force. Up until that point I repeatedly told myself that Cerberus was not working for the Reapers, that they were there for some other reason. My hopes were dashed as I watched one of the shock troops shake its creepy, clawed hand with the hand of one of the Cerberus soldiers. In an almost inhuman voice, the Cerberus trooper reported to the Reaper shock troop that his squad had eliminated all resistance in the adjacent sector. I had no time to keep watching though, I needed to get off the station and warn the galaxy if they did not already know.

As if I was a master at parkour, I quietly sprang from the fighter craft and grabbed onto a small ledge about five feet away. Dangling with one hand, I used my other to open a grate as quietly as possible. Despite the additional mass from the cyborg enhancements bringing my total weight to a gratuitous two hundred eighty pounds, I elegantly propelled myself into the shaft. Somehow managing to keep my weapons from colliding with the cramped wall and ceiling of the shaft, I began my crawl through. As I crawled, I listened in as the Cerberus soldier continued his report to the Reaper troop, telling it where the other on-station guards were likely to be. I forced myself to stop as the Reaper creature began responding, simply surprised by the tone of its voice.

"Very well. This human station is under our control. Every soldier on this station is either dead or free from their will. Your kind's ascension has begun," it rattled off in its deep, menacing voice.

"Roger that. We will begin preparations to eliminate Aria T'Loak and clear out Omega. Liara T'Soni and the Shadow Broker network shall follow soon after," the Cerberus troop responded. I paused when I heard this and peered through a small grate that was beneath me. The Reapers were going to use Cerberus to systematically eliminate the most powerful individuals in the galaxy, and use that as a distraction to begin their destruction of all sentient life!

"Has Blaine Grimm been dealt with?" the Reaper troop meekly responded.

"We have had no confirmed visuals of him. He killed one of our squads minutes ago,"

"He must be dealt with. Bring his body to us dead or alive. Send your best after him,"

"What about Commander Shepard?"

"He is on Earth. We will have him soon enough,"

"Roger, Echo-6 come in, abandon sabotage. Your orders are to find and apprehend Blaine Grimm. If he cannot be taken alive, kill him but preserve his body," the Cerberus nut went on over his radio. I had a choice to make at that point. I could either crash the party and take the fight to them, considering I had the element of surprise. Or I could continue my journey down this shaft, having no knowledge of exactly where it would take me. As I pondered, a group of unexpected guests showed up. The lights flared on and the Cerberus troops and Reaper monsters found themselves surrounded on both sides by Alliance troops and Turian soldiers entering the bay doors. It looked like the Reaper was wrong in stating that every non-Cerberus non-Reaper being had been accounted for. They wasted no time in opening fire, and a massive firefight broke out.

Not being one to shy away from a fight, I quickly broke the grate and jumped down in the middle of the gunfire, protecting myself with a biotic barrier. As I landed, I pulled my blade out and took the Cerberus leader's head clean off. The two troops on either side of him then directed their attention to me. By the time they had their weapons trained on me, I already sheathed my blade and prepared for some hand-to-hand combat. I grabbed both of their rifles with my hands and pulled them in so they crossed each other right in front of my chest. I then used as much strength as I could muster to rip the rifles from their hands and fling them in their respective directions, delivering massive blows to their heads. Both fell to the ground unconscious as I ducked and rolled behind some repair machinery next to me. I used my new combat vision to detect the nearest threats, but found that all were engaged in fighting the Alliance troops and Turians across from them. I watched as several more Cerberus troops fell to the gunfire but the Reaper shock troops withstood the brunt of it.

They responded by firing their electromagnetically charged weapons at my allies, instantly tearing through two of them, probably killing them before they even hit the ground. I fought these creatures before, but these guys had no clue what they were up against. A sizable force was efficient enough to fight Cerberus, but these Reaper troops were on another level of lethality. The towering beasts began closing in on the group of soldiers, who had begun retreating in a leapfrog fashion back out into the hallway while the group on the other side of the bay was busy fighting the remainder of the Cerberus troops. I still had the element of surprise, and needed to use that to my advantage to even out this fight. I quickly and quietly moved from cover to cover, approaching the terrifying fighting force as tactically as I possibly could in hopes of taking one or two of them out before they could respond.

At that point, another Alliance soldier had fallen, taking a massive blast to one of her legs. She had just become a perfect candidate for reworking by the reapers as she was wounded and could not effectively fight back. They began approaching her, but I used their prey almost as a distraction as I pounced on the back of one of the Reaper troops and slammed my knife into the side of its head. It let out its version of the bass boom that the actual Reapers would let out, then turned around to face me. Unfortunately for it, I held tight onto the knife, and before it realized what was happening, it turned completely around while I kept the blade lodged in. With its head split in half, I pulled the knife out and decapitated my foe. Two of the Reaper troops continued to approach the fallen soldier while the other one took position a couple of meters away from me. At this distance, the bastard definitely had the upper hand, as it could strike me with its superior reach before I could even react. The standoff continued for a few more moments as we sidestepped each other, trying to gain the better position.

I noticed one of its clawed hands light up with biotic energy and quickly dove forward towards the beast. As I landed I sheathed my knife once again and attempted to scoop it up by its legs, but was met by a blast of biotic energy from its hand. My body fell to the ground in pain as I pulled out my upgraded Phalanx shot the ugly beast in its face. The power of the pistol forced it to stumble back, so I wasted no time firing until the thermal clip overheated. The creature was still standing and looked very pissed off. It then charged towards me with its claws out, ready to smear my guts all over the floor. I ducked beneath the claws and slammed the pistol into its jaw as hard as I could, permanently disfiguring its already ugly face. As it lost its balance and fell backwards, I sprang into the air and punched it right in its face, giving its head just enough momentum to become unconscious from the collision with the ground.

I then turned my attention to the two remaining shock troops, who had already diverted their attention back to me. Not having the time or patience to replace the thermal clip of the Phalanx, I threw it to the ground and pulled out my Scimitar. I then proceeded to squeeze the trigger repeatedly until the eight round-capacity of the thermal clip was expended. All that remained of the two was a large heap of Reaper mess. I turned around for a brief second to discover that the joint Alliance-Turian squad had downed the Cerberus troops while sustaining minimal casualties. Amazed by the power of the upgraded shotgun, I replaced the thermal clip and ran over to the downed soldier. She was wounded pretty bad, but I figured she could survive.

"What's your name?" I asked as I knelt beside her.

"Corporal... Corporal Rose..." she responded nervously, the pain from her wound making itself known through her voice.

"Okay Miss Rose, I'm going to give you some medigel and get us the hell off this station,"

"What about the rest of the survivors? We need to find them,"

"Look, those things outside... these Reapers... they're here to kill us all. We need to get off this station as soon as possible,"

"What, but..."

"It's a lost cause. I'm sorry, but there's Cerberus and Reaper-controlled monstrosities all over this ship. That was a small patrol we just fought, there's no telling how many more are here. This is our only chance to..." I said and was interrupted by the leader of the other squad.

"Sergeant Grimm, I'm Captain Rivers of the 5th Fleet Special Ops division. I'm sure I don't need to run the same old story by you, but we need to get to Earth," he said as he offered a brief handshake.

"Pleased to meet you, I'm glad there are some survivors. How do we get off this station?"

"We can use the MX-72, a prototype stealth troop transport and hopefully avoid detection from the Reapers as we go to FTL speeds. It's risky, but I think it's our only chance,"

"So you know what's going on here,"

"Not everyone was ignorant to the Reaper threat, Grimm. Lets go while we still have a chance," he responded. He then knelt down and applied some medigel to Corporal Rose's wound.

"Do you know what happened to General Adkins and Commander Ber'Kik?"

"Likely KIA. We haven't found any trace of them, no personal distress signals were given off or anything. Regardless, we have to move forward. We are the only remaining chance to warn Earth about the Reapers' arrival,"

"Agreed," I responded, and carefully picked Rose up over my shoulder. I then followed the Captain and his squad back through the bay. We moved quickly through an air tunnel until we reached a small hangar full of small fighting vehicles and troop transports. Captain Rivers quickly identified the prototype and hacked into its systems. It took a total of two minutes, but he got it done and the twelve of us jumped inside. I moved into the squad bay with the rest of the team as the Captain jumped into the pilot seat and started it up. Less than a minute later, we were airborne and screamed through the exit hatch. The final door opened just in time as we reached it and we flew into the Reaper-dominated space. I looked out a small window in awe as the Reaper fleet floated before us. The stealth systems clearly worked as none of the Reapers paid any attention to our escape. We quickly darted for the relay and began our trek back to the good old Solar System. The Reapers surely detected us as we went through the relay, but it did not give them enough time to react and strike.

_Blaine Grimm, why must you expend your energy trying to fight this? We are here, and none of your civilizations, as a collective or as groups of individual consciousnesses can stand against us. The end is here. For you. For everything you know. We are infinite, and our power is eternal. _


End file.
